Chapter III: Part 3

And Tom walked out quietly and solemnly, but a free man yet. But the case never came to a trial again. Tom was not himself from that day on. He was sobered, subdued, crushed. He seemed to think “Marse John had gone back on him.” He quit drinking, fighting, and disputing on things religious. He even quit telling his experience “endurin’ de wah,” and, more wonderful still, he actually went to work. All this was too much for him. As the day approached for the trial he became melancholy, morbid, and finally took to his bed in earnest. At first they thought he would get up soon, but he grew rapidly worse; and a week before the trial, the doctor said that Tom would never “furage” again. The old Judge was holding court in another county, and had not heard of Tom’s sickness. He promptly called the case in its order on the docket. Tom’s lawyer read the physician’s certificate as to Tom’s condition. The old Judge looked worried—even troubled. Then he glanced around the court—the major was not there. He took up his pen and wrote quickly across the docket: “Case nolle prossed; no prosecutor!” and as soon as the court adjourned he went by Tom’s cabin to see if he wanted anything, and to tell him about the nol prossing his case. As he neared the cabin he heard the uncanny music of the negro mourning song, and it startled him as he went in and found them chanting it around Tom’s bed.

He looked at Tom; he was sober, but dying.

The old Judge went up, sat by the bed, and took Tom tenderly by the hand. The negro’s face lit up for a moment with its old-time light as he recognized the old Judge. Then he remembered:

“Will dey try me ergin; will dey convict de old man ergin, Marse John?” eagerly asked Tom.

“Not while I am Judge of this circuit, Tom—never!” as he gripped Tom’s hand.

“Thang Gord, Marse John! thang Gord! I knew you—wouldn’t! You see I—wus—jes’ furagin’! The majuh knowed it—jes’ furagin’.” He was quiet a little and dozed some. Then he sprang half-way up in bed—a startled look in his eye:

“Lemme out! lemme out!” he cried. “Don’t you hear it, Marse John? Dat’s taps—de army ob de Tennessee am sleepin’—de lights mos’ out—I must hustle an’ git sumpin’ to eat—I mus’ furage—gwine on er long furage—but I’ll wait—on—you—foreber—in—de—camp—dar, Marse John——.” He broke off suddenly; a radiant light gleamed in his eyes; “Miss Mary, my mistis; O dar she am, beckinin’ an’ smilin’ to po’ ole Tom; beckinin’ an’ smilin’, ‘Gord will reward—you—sum—day!’ Oh, home, home, Marse John!”

Two hours later the old Judge came out of Tom’s cabin, crying like a boy. Tom had gone on his last “furage.”

Old Casey, the Fifer

By HENRY EWELL HORD

[NOTE.—The Editor of Trotwood’s believes this is one of the
best descriptions of Franklin’s bloody and needless fight ever
written, and a pathetic pen picture never to be forgotten. Its
author is an inmate of the Old Soldiers’ Home, Nashville, and
was one of the bravest soldiers of the Lost Cause. We are told
by an old comrade of the writer that in one of the fiercest
fights of the war, a large shell bursted in a foot of Mr.
Hord’s head, knocking him down and completely destroying his
hearing, killing two men behind him and one at his side. The
historic value of this pathetic story is great. It has been
said and denied that Forrest, with his wonderful foresight,
went to Hood just before he ordered his army to the holocaust
of Franklin and begged him for permission to flank the Yankee
army out, saying he would do it in fifteen minutes, and there
need be no battle. “No,” exclaimed Hood, “no, charge them
out.” Forrest rode off in disgust. In studying the battle of
Franklin for a chapter in the writer’s new novel, “The Bishop
of Cottontown,” we read all the Records of the Rebellion
pertaining to the fight, endeavoring, among other things, to
find some evidence of the truth of this. In Gen. J. D. Cox’
report we found it corroborated, that General saying in the
afternoon he saw evidence of Forrest’s Cavalry preparing to
flank him, and he prepared immediately to evacuate Franklin!
And thus was Forrest’s military genius corroborated by the
other side. But here is the man who carried the despatch,
and the thrilling picture of the brave boys going into that
veritable mouth of hell so gallantly, and of old Fifer leading
them on till his tune ceased beneath a clubbed musket, caused
the writer to lay down the graphic story of this old, maimed
soldier and use his handkerchief. And no more graphic story of
Franklin was ever written.]

The following characteristic letter accompanied the story:

Dear Mr. Moore: I send you the enclosed yarn of Fifer. If you
think it worth publishing in Trotwood you can do so. I am, as
you see, not much of a writer like Ben Hord. I get the facts
all O. K., but, to tell it so somebody will be interested,
that’s the rub. The trouble about writing a war yarn, no two
soldiers see things alike, and some fellow is liable to make
you out a liar before you know it. I once wrote an account of
a drill we had against the 15th Mississippi for a flag offered
by the ladies, of Canton, Miss. I gave, as I thought, and what
some of my old regiment had written, the exact facts. The
colonel of the 15th Mississippi is still living. He answered my
article, and made me out seventeen kinds of liars. I felt left.
Not long after that the last ex-Confederate Reunion was held at
Nashville. One day I was standing in front of the Tulane Hotel
watching the big crowd going by, and a man passed with a metal
badge with “15th Miss.” on it. I stopped him, and asked him if
he remembered that drill, and when he found out I was in the
other regiment, he was delighted. He had a crowd of Mississippi
boys with him, but none of them had been members of the 15th,
so he stood there and gave them an account of the drill, and
corroborated every word I had written, though he had never seen
it. Well, I believe you literary fellows say it is misquoted,
but we privates have another name for it.

Respectfully yours,

HENRY EWELL HORD.
Hermitage, Tenn., Soldiers’ Home.

It was at Gainsville, Ala., we parted with our old Fifer Casey. He had been with us ever since the regiment was organized at Camp Boone, Tenn. He had fifed all through the Mexican War and nearly three years of the Civil War. At first he had lots to tell us about Cerro Gordo, Palo Alto and Chepultepec, but after we got down to business old Casey gave the Mexican War and Greasers a rest.

He was a tall, slim old fellow, carried himself as if steel ramrods were his regular diet, scorned to ride in an ambulance or wagon on a march, kept at the head of the regiment all the time, and went into all battles playing his liveliest tunes.

At Shiloh, in the charge that broke up the “Hornet Nest,” old Casey was playing “Cheer, Boys, Cheer,” and the whole regiment singing it as they closed in with the Yanks.

At the tale end of many a long day’s march, when everybody was footsore and weary, thinking and wishing for camp, marching any kind of old way, Casey would notice it, and strike up “The Girl I Left Behind Me” or “The Stump-Tail Dog.” The boys would forget about their weariness, close up, catch the step, and before we had gone an hundred feet, without a word from any officer, we would be sailing along like we were “passing in review.”

Casey had a musical chum that belonged to the 9th Arkansas, of our brigade, who was just the opposite of Casey—short and stout built. The top of his head would scarcely reach old Casey’s shoulder. When those two got together with a canteen of whisky there would be little sleeping in that regiment that night. We used to call it “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” with variations, “Long Girl” and “Short Girl.”

Casey always refused to be mounted, saying he did not enlist in a cavalry regiment and did not propose to be killed by some fool horse. He did not condescend to ask for any papers, but coolly walked over and joined the 9th Arkansas, with his old chum.

Our only regret about being mounted was leaving the other regiments of our brigade—Buford Brigade, Loring Division. We had been together a long time, and many battles and long marches had formed many warm friendships. General Buford had drilled us till we were one of the best drilled and most soldierly-looking brigades in the C. S. A., and always gave a good account of ourselves in battle. The regiments were the 35th and 27th Alabama, 9th Arkansas and 12th Louisiana, nearly all young men, and as good soldiers as ever marched. After we left, Colonel Scott, of the 12th Louisiana, was ranking officer, and commanded the brigade. General Buford accepted an offer from General Forrest, and followed us to North Mississippi, where we joined General Forrest. The 3d, 7th, 8th and 12th Kentucky were brigaded, and Col. A. P. Thompson commanded. He was killed a short time after at Paducah, Ky., and General Lyon succeeded him. Lyon and Bell’s brigades formed the Buford Division.

We followed the “Wizard of the Saddle” till the surrender, and were engaged in every fight and raid in which he was.

On the campaign to Nashville in front of General Hood, I was detailed to act as courier for General Buford. The day of the battle of Franklin, Tenn., General Buford had the right wing of our army. There was nothing but General Wilson’s cavalry in front of us. We drove the Yankees back across Harpeth River, and at a crossing five miles above Franklin they dismounted and prepared to make a desperate resistance to our crossing. They formed their line on the north bank close to the edge, and across the river was an old field which we would be forced to cross to reach the ford. They could rake us fore and aft before we could get to the river. As soon as General Buford saw the situation, he dismounted two of Lyon’s regiments back of the field a half mile from the river, and with four guns of battery double-quicked them across the field up to the river. They then opened a rapid fire on the Yankee line across the river. The two lines made a dense smoke which hung like a fog over the river. Under cover of the smoke, General Buford with the balance of the command crossed, mounted, the smoke completely screening their movement, and the Yankees never fired on them while crossing. The boys had orders to cease firing after we got down the bank, which they did. The Yankees thinking they had gained a victory because the fire stopped, cheered lustily, and almost ceased firing. While they were still cheering, a long line of stern-faced men cleared the bank and fell onto them with carbine, pistol and saber.

I thought I would be smart, and got right behind General Buford, going up the bank at a place that I did not think a goat could climb. The General weighed 320 pounds, and rode a big, old horse. I did not think a ball could find me behind such good works. A moment after, when I saw old “Waggoner” and the General hanging right over me, I thought I had been a little too smart, but old “Waggoner” did not slip. He got his front feet on the top and sprang as lightly as a cat right into the Yankee line. One of them thought he had found a loose horse and grabbed him by the bit, but turned him loose with an awful howl. We actually surprised the Yankees as much as if we had ambuscaded them from a stone wall, got the first fire, which at such close range counts up. The boys who did the firing on the south bank, and the battery, mounted and came over and joined. The Yankees were of the very best brand—tall Westerners, could ride and shoot with the best. They put up a good fight, but we got away with them and scattered them. There was nothing between us and the Nashville and Franklin pike then.

General Buford made a report to General Forrest, and told him if he were backed up by Infantry he would swing on around and grab the Nashville pike, and that would force the Yankees out of their breastworks at Franklin. I was selected to carry that dispatch.

To my anxious inquiry where I would find General Forrest, “Damn if I know,” said old Abe. “About Franklin, I guess,” was all I could get.

The fight at Franklin was just commencing then. I recrossed the river. I had the choice of two routes. The one up the river was shorter, but as far as I could see it lay across soft fields that would force me to ride slowly or kill my horse. The other was a good, hard road that, from the course it ran, I knew must lead into the pike on which General Hood’s army was advancing, a few miles south of Franklin. I chose the latter.

I reached the pike just as Hood’s artillery was going to the front under whip and spur.

There is nothing more thrilling than to see a well-equipped battery going to the front. As far as I could see up and down the pike they were rushing forward, six horses to each gun, and on the Jump. Cannoneers sitting braced in their places, stripped to the waist, yelling and laughing at everything, as if it were the most joyous thing in the world—fighting. The guns followed each other so close, and were going at such a rapid gait, that I had to watch my chance and slip across the pike. Across the pike, and marching in the field parallel with the pike, was the head of General Stewart’s Corps, just passing, the General riding in front. I knew him by sight, and I thought he might be able to give me some information as to the whereabouts of General Forrest. I slipped across the pike, jumped a wall and saluted General Stewart. The General returned my salute as politely as if I were General Hood. I told him who I was, and asked him if he knew anything about General Forrest.

He said no, he had not been to the front yet, and did not know what they were doing.

I had turned, and was riding with him. He then inquired of me what the cavalry were doing. I told him about the fight at the river, and added that if we could get the infantry there would be no serious fight at Franklin. He seemed to be greatly interested.

Just then a staff officer came flying down the pike, jumped the wall in front of General Stewart, saluted, and said: “General Hood’s compliments; you will please move your command forward at double-quick.”

While he was talking to General Stewart, I was sizing him up. He was a young, handsome, dashing looking fellow, finely mounted, and a good rider, but he looked as proud and haughty as if he commanded the whole army. I hesitated some little time before I could muster courage to address such a magnificent creature. Poor couriers did not always get courteous treatment.

I think General Stewart noticed my slowness, for he turned to the staff officer, and said: “Here is a young man very anxious to find General Forrest. Can you inform him?” The fellow never even looked at me, but whirled his horse around and said, “Follow me!” He took the wall, into the pike.

There was something about that “follow me” and manner that got my back up. He had hardly got his horse straightened out down the pike before I was alongside of him. If my thoughts had been spoken there, they would have been something like: “D— you, I have always been used to riding beside better men than you are.”

We passed the guns as if they were standing still. Never a word or look did that fellow give me. He kept on till I thought he was surely going to charge the town. After I had about given him up as crazy, he suddenly pulled up, and I, not expecting it, shot on by, but stopped in almost a bound and rode back. Pointing to the right of the pike, he said: “I saw General Forrest up there a few moments ago, and guess he is there yet.”

I looked in the direction he pointed, but could make out nothing for the smoke. The lines seemed to be close together and engaged in a fearful conflict. This was my first and lasting sight of the fearful fight at Franklin. I turned toward the staff officer to get more definite directions, and found he had disappeared. I never saw him any more. I left the pike and rode in the direction he had pointed. The ground was strewn with dead and wounded men. I had to ride slowly. I worked my way along in the rear of the Confederate lines a long ways to the right, but could not find General Forrest. Then I concluded I was too close in. I knew he had no command there. I did not think he would go up so close to the firing line if he were only looking on, so rode further off and then turned towards the pike again.

I had almost reached the pike when I heard someone swearing at a fearful rate. I could not see very far for the smoke and gloom.

I thought, “If that is not the General, it’s his twin brother, for nobody could swear that way but he.”

It proved to be the old boy himself. By that time our lines were giving way, and men were going to the rear in squads. The General was trying to rally them. He had worked himself into a terrible rage, had his saber drawn, and I expected to see him use it on some of them, and they would probably have shot the stuffing out of him. They did not know him, and seemed to resent his interference. Their own officers rallied them and charged those impregnable breastworks nine times, they say.

I rode up to General Forrest, stuck my dispatch under his nose and told him it was very important. He glared at me a moment like he could not make up his mind whether to cut my head off or shoot me. Finally he called, “Major!”

Out of the smoke rode the major and took the dispatch and read it to the General. I don’t recollect now whether it was Major Strange or Anderson. Both were nice men to do business with. Before he got through reading the report all signs of anger and passion had disappeared from the General’s face. It was always my private opinion that most of it was “put on,” though I did not tell him so for various reasons.

“Bully for old Abe,” says General Forrest, after hearing the report. “Major, tell him to hold what he’s got, and I will be with him as soon as I see General Hood and get the infantry.”

He went off on the jump. We were standing then on the side of the pike. The major was dismounted, stooping down writing on his knee, and I was holding his horse.

Out of the gloom and smoke came the sound of drum and fife. I looked back down the pike and saw a long line of bayonets coming at a double-quick with “trailing arms.” They were not yelling, their line as straight as a string, and perfect time. Though they were leaving a broad trail of dead behind, they kept the ranks closed up. From the stern, set face and fierce light of battle in their eyes, I could see they meant business. In front of them was our old fifer, Casey, and his Arkansas chum, playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” They had two kettle-drums and a bass. They passed within ten feet of me.

I yelled at old Casey as he recognized me, and nodded as he flashed past. I knew then that was our old infantry brigade. I saw General Scott further down the line. It enthused me so to see our comrades going in so gallantly that I yelled to beat the band. My horse thought hell had broken loose somewhere and wanted to go, too. The Yankees were sending a perfect storm of shot and shell down the pike. Two lines of breastworks, two solid sheets of flame above them, the batteries looked like the whole top of the hill was ablaze, but into that hell our old boys charged, over the first line like a flash, and a race with the Yankees for the second line. I watched old Casey. All the musicians were killed or wounded before they reached the second line, but Casey, above the roar of the guns and the bursting of shells, still marched, playing on, and I could hear that old fife screaming “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” At last, for one short moment, I saw old Casey’s tall, slim form mount the second line of Yankee works, and then “The Girl I Left Behind Me” came to a sudden end. His music suddenly ceased. A Yankee knocked him over the head with a gun. Casey was captured and sent to prison. I have never seen him since, but the last I heard of him he was living in Cadiz, Ky.

I was called back to my own business by a gentle tap on my knee and heard the major say, with a very superior smile: “You seem to be a little excited.”

“Don’t get that way often, Major,” I replied, “that’s our old infantry brigade. Look how they go in.”

He looked across my horse, and I could see his face light up. “By God, those are gallant fellows,” he says.

“Yes, old Abe trained them,” was my answer.

The major gave me the dispatch, and I was obliged to leave at once.

Hood would not give Forrest the infantry nor allow him to flank and follow up our victory.

Twice in twenty-four hours had Forrest let the bars down to the Yankee rear, and Hood would not take advantage of it. Things were changing every moment, and I had to make several trips between Buford and Forrest, just how many I don’t remember. I was riding long after the fight was over.

* * * * *

_The education which is worth while is the one we learn in making a living._

The Candle

Some people work and wait, and smile and steal, and cringe and plan; make shifty cuts and cheat, lay up whole tons of revenue and rot and work their lives out—just to see how big a funeral they may have.

—JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE.

In the Strawberry Country

BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE

Castleberry, Ala., April 28, 1906.

This is the center of the strawberry industry of Alabama. As your car passes through the pine lands, stretching along the lower half of the State, you catch a whiff, now and then, from a passing car-load of the queen of fruits. It extends practically from the thriving town of Greenville to Flomaton. It is a delightful odor—these strawberries—mingled with that of the pine, and the perfume of some wild flower gifted beyond its kind. It is a pretty sight to step off at this little pine-bowered village, which, a few years ago, was virgin pine lands, and see some five hundred berry pickers in one field of a hundred acres or more. The pickers are nearly all negroes, and about half of them women and children, and they make wages while the season lasts that should easily keep them the rest of the year.

That is, it would keep anybody but a negro—who never keeps.

At two cents a quart they earn from two to four and one-half dollars per day. They could earn more and save it all if they would work Saturday afternoons.

But a negro, like a mule, has some peculiar ideas engrafted into the network of his being, garnered from a long line of holiday-taking ancestors. “Like produces like or the likeness of an ancestor” is the unchanging rule of the physical world; and it must not be forgotten that for many thousands of years the negro took nothing but holidays and whatever else he found lying around that was good to eat.

And he wore nothing but a smile. This knowledge may help you in solving the problem.

It is creditable to the white man that he has bred any work into him at all. However, he has ideas on the subject yet, and one of them is that, since his freedom, it is contrary to some amendment of his Constitution to work Saturday afternoons, even in fields carpeted with berry leaves, studded with crimson clusters of reflected sunset, cooled with healthful pine breezes and saturated with the perfume the gods loved most and the soft balminess of the eternal spring in the sky.

That sounds like heaven, but it is not the heaven the negro wants. That’s the white man’s heaven, and the white man would just be fool enough to work right on till dark, making that extra two dollars and saving it and all the rest of his week’s wages by keeping away from the dives of near-by towns.

But the white man is a vain and foolish creature to the negro.

He has aspirations and he lives for the morrow. The negro has none—the pure-blooded negro never had an aspiration in his life—and he lives not even for the day but for the night following it, when his work ends and he may be a nigger among his kind.

The white man works to accumulate; the negro to spend. And Saturday afternoon and night is a bully time to spend what he has made the rest of the week. There is only one better time, and that’s the next day, if there is a foot-washing or a funeral.

That’s enough for the negro. His problem is nearly solved, for the tide of immigration that has been flowing westward is being turned southward. And when it turns there will be no negro question. Like everybody else he will take his place in the order of things where his nature fits. He will be then one muscle in the South’s great arm of labor, but he will never be the biceps.

I found the people primitive, but honest and kind. They have lived around here all their lives, and this thing is a revelation to them. It is more money than they ever heard of before. Why, people actually carry bags of silver around with them to pay off pickers. Heretofore the land had been most anybody’s for the asking, but now they can make more money on one acre properly tended to berries than they had before on a whole farm.

A small boy came in going to mill, driving two little steers hitched to a cart with wheels as primitive as the ancient Britons used, sawn from the sound pine logs. He is immediately surrounded by the jolly drummers, while their picture is taken for Trotwood’s. The big, two-wheeled log carts used for hauling the big pine logs, are everywhere. Four, five, six and even twelve yoke of oxen are seen in the woods or on the roads, with tall, rawboned, sinewy fellows driving them with a long whip able to reach to the farthest yoke. He whirls it around his head and it cracks with a noise that would make it a great thing for a small boy on the fourth of July.

Only it takes a man to crack it, and I noticed that it never fell on his patient team—only the terrible exploding crack popped in the air above their ears, and I rather thought the yoke seemed as proud of it as their driver, for after every crack I noticed he added soothingly and softly: “Haw there, Buck!” and Buck hawed calmly, as if he was not at all afraid, nor even in a hurry, and they all went forward together with the steady pull of perfect understanding between the man and his team.

I induced one of them, a lithe, fine looking fellow, to stop his team in front of a car of berries, that I might take them, whip and all. And as I looked at him I knew that in all his life nothing he had ever eaten had ever disagreed with him, and that he had eaten everything that came his way.

O for his legs and back and these pineland quail, and my own love for hunting!

This pine belt of Alabama (I think while geology was fresh with me that it was called a tertiary formation, it came far after the carboniferous period around the Birmingham district) is one of the finest opportunities in the world for the homeseeker. The price of the lands is simply a song with a pine-top attachment. Two dollars per acre, wild, and the improved lands ten to fifteen. They are sandy, with a good clay foundation, and capable of holding what they get, and of great improvement. When I went through them last they were a wilderness untouched, save where large corporations had gobbled them up in vast tracts for almost nothing and held them for the long-leafed yellow pines upon them. After the sawmill came the cotton and corn. And of late has it been learned that in this belt alone lie possibilities of all kinds of fruits and vegetables, undreamed of four or five years ago. It is safe to say that in the belt alone, extending from the seaboard clear across the South, through Texas, even, and Oklahoma, lies the future’s great early fruit and vegetable area of the continent.

The industry has scarcely begun here yet, and that only along the line of the railroad, and yet from Castleberry the L. & N. railroad is shipping from five to ten car-loads of strawberries alone per day.

The American people are now rich—richer than any nation ever was before. They are learning how to eat and to live comfortably, and to spend their money for delicacies. They hunt Southern climates in winter and winter climates in summer. Once, when they were poor, they were satisfied with things in their season. In the memory of the young man of to-day he who used ice or had ice cream in summer was classed as the profligate Solomon spoke of, and was destined to die in rags. As for having strawberries in February and March, tomatoes at Christmas, asparagus the year round, cabbages, lettuce—many of the vegetables so common that even the poor may indulge now and then out of season—it was undreamed of. Think of what it will be a century from now. Think of it and all this great, balmy, bright-watered, sky-domed, clay-founded, health-breeding, beautiful, blossoming land, greater in extent than a half dozen Eastern States, lying sweet and cool under the dark green of shadowing pine, untouched by ax or plow, that may be bought up for two dollars, and needs only a little brains and energy to flush crimson in peach or berry or green in vegetables.

And will it pay? I will give just one instance, not the unusual incident, but the common one. I had walked around taking in the pretty picture at Castleberry, the cottages among the pines, the great gaps cut out solidly in the woods, forming fields alive with pickers, veritable pictures of life in paints of red and green, and enclosed in frames of deep emerald. I crossed the yellow, bright waters of a creek, stepping from log to log. I saw a dozen kinds of birds that had not yet reached Tennessee in their northern flight. Wild vines and flowers bloomed everywhere. I walked two miles along from Castleberry to Marble, another coming town of berries and fruits, enjoying it all as I did as a boy, when I wandered among these trees of poetry in a land of poems.

This photo shows fifteen berry buyers from as many different commission houses. Over sixty houses have been represented at different times this season at Castleberry.]

The very smell of them said “home.” The skies said “home,” the dying pine needles, giving out their aroma beneath the foot, the way a little stiff-tailed woodpecker shifted around a rotting pine stump. It meant home and memories—memories that had slept embalmed.

Life—it has always hurt me. Was it given us for pain, that we might not become as the fatted swine, who, having no hurt neither have any hope of immortality?

To me it has been one great hurting and the times I have been joyous are the times I have acted in self defense.

I unslung my little kodak and tried to take a razor-back in the edge of the woods. I wanted a good picture of one—this hog of the Cracker South, whose sinewy, lean, sweet bacon is sought for at fabulous prices by the nobility of Europe. I approached him with confidence, thinking he would recognize me as an old friend—nay, even, from my build, as one of his kine. (A horrid pun, but a slippance.) But the razor-back is born in the land of the darky, and the same great Designer who gave lightness to the fingers of the darky gave speed to the heels of the razor-back.

And thus has he survived and still lives. I think he did not even stop to look at my face. To this day he thinks I was black.

Around Marble there are 350 acres in strawberries and 100 or more in Alberta peaches, and as I stepped into the clearing I met a native with a good, honest face and carrying a bag of silver in his hands. We soon became acquainted and he told me his name was John Barns and that he was going to the field to pay off his pickers. It being Saturday noon. I found him very straightforward and not inclined to exaggerate. He had bought his farm of 240 acres Christmas, 1901, for $500. His daughter married one W. W. Wright, who took a notion to plant strawberries—just one acre. He set out the plants December, 1905, and though this had been the poorest year in the history of the berry around Marble, the late spring and frosts holding them back fully three weeks, and cutting off the first crop entirely, Mr. Wright had cleared, after paying for his plants, labor, fertilizers and picking, one hundred and twenty-five dollars on that acre.

“Now, 1903 was our best year,” said Mr. Barns, and he pulled out a little notebook he had. “Now, that year I planted my first berries, one and one-quarter acres, and they netted me $521.27, to be exact.”

“Under the dark of shadowy pines
Untouched by axe or plow.”]

We were joined, as we walked along, by another native, Mr. W. R. Adkinson, who told me that in 1905 his neighbor, Mr. Elisha Downing, cleared $2,050, net, on seven and one-half acres of berries. They both agreed that this year was not so prosperous, and yet the railroad agent told me they shipped fifteen carloads the Saturday before. They fetched $2.50 to $3.50 per crate f. o. b. track at Castleberry. There were several representatives of rival commission houses on the ground all during the shipping season.

Although the section is comparatively new in the berry and fruit business, I found it had spread all up and down the railroad, and from a reliable party I found the area planted to be about 1,800 acres in berries and 1,100 acres in Alberta peaches, extending from Bolling and including Garland, Dunham, Owassa, Evergreen (a beautiful little town and a great health resort), Sparta, Marble, Castleberry, Kirkland, Brewton (another beautiful and thriving town), Flomaton, Century and Canal. An hundred acres will be planted at Evergreen this year in cantaloupes, while many cars of radishes were shipped from Greenville this year. Eighteen hundred acres out of as many hundred thousand, and two or three weeks of strawberries for the millions of people who have been waiting all winter for them! This looks small and shows what may be done in the future.

At Marble I found a most interesting strawberry farm, and there I saw the field dotted with pickers, a picturesque, poetic sight, especially when dinner time arrived and the berries came in with the cream. The berries we had for dinner were red and firm, with a fine flavor, and Mr. Lister, who raised them, assured me that just thirty-five days before, or on March 23, he had transplanted the vines. He called them, I think, the Three W’s, though other berries which were cultivated for market were Lady Thompson, Klondike and Excelsior.

I found Mr. Lister a great stickler for fertilizer, and though he said he had not yet been able to carry out his plans fully, he recommended the following as a sure process to attain the highest degree of success in raising the berries: Five hundred pounds of acid phosphate and cottonseed meal, equal parts, to begin with. Later, in October, side dress them with 500 pounds equal parts acid phosphate, cottonseed meal and kainit. Top dress in February with 400 pounds fertilizer, one-eighth per cent. potash, seven per cent. acid phosphate and five per cent. nitrate soda. After they are one year old about 500 pounds under them in fall, and so applying about three dressings a year, every four months apart, of about 400 pounds, for feeding the plants and building the foundation for the berries.

Mr. Lister thinks that the land may be bought cleared, fenced, fertilized, planted and cultivated ready to pick for sixty dollars per acre. The following are some of the companies I found engaged for a hundred miles down the line of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. I was unable to get all of them: Bolling Stock Company, Bolling, Ala., about $20,000, eighty acres in berries, eighty in peaches and tomatoes in car lots; Garland Company, Garland, Ala., forty acres; Dunham Stock Company, Dunham, Ala., sixty acres, radishes in car lots; Brown Shepard Fruit Co. and Gravella Fruit Co., Owassa, about 215 acres in berries and peaches; Evergreen, Ala., about 100 in berries and 300 in peaches; Sparta, Ala., forty acres in berries; Marble, Ala., 350 acres in berries and 100 acres in peaches, and so on, as enumerated above. In some places I have found that they were planting the berries between the rows of peaches, and, they tell me, with good results. Mr. W. D. Brown, of Gravella, told me of eight acres of berries which netted their owner $1,800. I was impressed by the fact that the entire business was in its infancy, so far as gauging the possible demands of the future or in establishing the line of fruit and berries for which the land was adapted. As time goes on they will doubtless find that the land will be found suitable for both cantaloupes and watermelons and fruits of all kinds, including figs and grapes. In the matter of grapes alone, I happen to know that in a similar section in Butler County, Ala., a light, sandy land, with good clay subsoil, the finest of Scuppernong grape arbors flourished, some of them covering a half-acre of ground, from which the best of home-made wines are brewed.

Throughout all that section of the South, the land itself is good for all farm purposes, differing, more or less, in different sections, but all capable of holding the fertilizer used and returning good crops of cotton, corn, oats, sugar cane, peas and other legumes. I doubt if better cotton lands may be found in the South than in the pine flat section of Alabama. On all of these lands wild grasses and clover grow in abundance, and I find the cost of growing stock reduced to a minimum.

Strawberries and fruits are the poetry of it—the prose is there, too, and awaits only the hand of the practical, steady, industrious man to make as good a yield of good things all under the fairest skies and in a climate as healthful and amid people as hospitable as may be found in all the world.

The History of the Hals

PART X.—THE FIRST TOM HAL

By JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE

The first Tom Hal of which there is any record was a roan pacer about fifteen hands high or a little over, with a black mane and tail, very strong and well muscled, and of a great deal of style. He was a clean-limbed, beautifully-turned little saddle horse (if tradition has it right), remarkably fast at the pace and going all the saddle gaits, especially the running walk or fox trot, so desirable then, as now, when a business gait under the saddle was needed. This was about the year 1824-5; and he was ridden (so says tradition) by a Dr. Boswell, who bought him in Philadelphia and rode him from that city to Lexington, Ky., his home. Boswell called him a Canadian, and declared he was the best saddle horse he ever rode. He also said he was an iron horse, and later, to prove it, he agreed for a wager to ride the horse from Leesburg, Ky., to Louisville, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and back, in the same day. It was midsummer at that. He did it, but tradition says the hard, hot ride came nearly ruining the horse, causing him to go blind. I have often thought of this Dr. Boswell. A right gallant pill mixer and letter-of-blood he must have been. I have never heard anyone describe him, but I think I can: A good natured, horse-loving, poker-playing, jolly cuss, a little fat, with a well padded seat, or else he had not been so fond of a saddle and seventy-five miles a day. No skinny man ever sticks to a saddle long. They prefer to walk, even in those days when all the goods for the Western Settlement (as Kentucky and Tennessee were called) were purchased in Philadelphia and hauled across the mountains five hundred miles, or floated down the rivers a thousand. So Boswell loved a horse, and loved to ride. He was not averse to sharp horse-trading (as was customary in those days), nor did he fail to put up a little wager now and then, as witness his bet that he could ride Tom Hal from Leesburg to Louisville and back in a day.

Now, in studying Boswell and his horse, we must go back to the times in which they lived. Philadelphia was the city which then rivaled New York, and was the business market for nearly all the Western and Southwestern States and Territories. In our story of the Hermitage we have seen that General Jackson bought all the goods for his store, even as far as Nashville, in Philadelphia. It was the great mart for the Western world. And all men rode in those days. There were few roads, and rough ones, and when the now famous Dr. Boswell (it is very likely he was a young fellow, who finished his medical education at old Jefferson College) started back to Kentucky, the cheapest and best way to get there was to buy a Canadian pony, ride him through, and sell him in Kentucky. Anyway, that is what he did.

A sad pity it was that the booted mixer of pills and calomel did not leave some record behind as to just what the little roan was. A sad pity he did not tell us in enduring lines why he called him Tom Hal, whom he beat in a horse trade when he got him, whom he robbed when first he mounted the original Tom Hal and rode him to Kentucky to fame.

For Boswell is famous—yea, as the other one was, for the other one is known as the biographer of Johnson, and this one as the biographer of the little Canadian pacing stud horse, the immortal Tom Hal, the pregenitor of the tribe of Hals.

Glorious Boswell, we know not what was his life, nor how nor when his taking off; nay, nor whom he took off—though we may be sure that in his day and generation he did his share with his lancet, his blue-mass and his calomel. Doubtless around the classic town of Lexington, perhaps even from Leesburg to Louisville, he left in his track lamenting widows and heart-broken orphans, whose sires first called in the horse-trading Boswell, and whose widow next called in the undertaker. Many a night, too, he rode the little pacer through the mud and sleet to the cabin of some lusty pioneer who had partaken too freely of biled cabbages and moonshine, and let a quart of blood from his guzzled body at the time he needed it most, or put a hot rock on the stomach that already had too much thereon. Often—often—the little pacer followed the trail of the stork at a two-minute clip, until, doubtless, in the language of Sentimental Tommy, he knew the difference between the wail of a “kid” and the groan of a “deader.”

And the pride of it—the glory of it! Didn’t every barefoot boy know him? “That’s Dr. Boswell an’ Tom Hal.”

“Didn’t the boys around the old fort store know him?

“Doc, thet’s a hell of a good little pony you’re ridin’.”

Didn’t all the old grannies know him: “Thar comes the Doctor, Sal, a-ridin’ his little amblin’ stud. Lemme get some clean sheets on the bed.”

Didn’t all the world know him—all the great, wide world, extending from Leesburg to Louisville? For there was nothing beyond. You bet your life they did. They all knew “Doc an’ his pacin’ stud.”

And Doc died and went the way of all the others he helped over the Styx, and, saddest of all, he left us nothing that we know.

For knowledge at last is just nothing that we know.

Less even than Shakespeare. For we know positively three things of Shake: He stole a deer in his youth, he married Anne Hathaway in his manhood, and he died and left a will in his older age—left a will in which he very cautiously told what was to be done with his best bed. But Tom Hal, the equal of his kind—equal even to Billy Shake and Dr. Jonson—of Tom Hal (he never had any best bed), and all we know is he was bought in Philadelphia, was a little, clean-limbed, rubber-hard pacer, and had his eyes ridden out of his head by a little wind-galled, blood-letting Doctor.

Great is Billy Shake! Great is Tommy Hal! Genius runs in parallel lines, and after centuries of mixing recipes to produce it, mankind has given it up and is willing to let it hit the earth now and then, untrammeled by toe-weights, unreined, unchecked, unbitted and unspurred. Shakespeare once wrote a description of a horse. You will find it in Venus and Adonis (if you’re not an old maid or a preacher), and this verse is as great and beautiful a description of Tom Hal, as he was and as he must have looked then (barring his “fet-locks shag and long”), as the poem itself is the most vivid and beautiful story of red-hot, immodest love:

“Look, when a painter would surpass the life
In limning out a well proportioned steed,
His art with Nature’s workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living would exceed:

“Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fet-locks shag and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide—
Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,
Save a proud rider, on so proud a back.”

But the horse of Shakespeare’s day was not the horse of Tom Hal’s day.

“Round-hoofed, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,” doubtless expressed the Norman blood that Shakespeare knew. To-day the round-hoofed ones are plugs, the short-jointed ones are cart horses, and those with fetlocks shag and long are close kin to the Mustang.

But the rest of it was Tom Hal:

“Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostrils wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong.”

Yes, all this was the first Tom Hal—and more.

* * * * *

Lexington, Ky., May 3.

Mr. John Trotwood Moore, Nashville, Tenn.

My Dear Sir: In one of your issues you say that “in 1816 Maria,
at Lexington, Ky., beat Robin Grey.” My maternal grandfather,
Benjamin Hieronymous, of Clarke County, Ky., was Robin Grey’s
original owner (owned his dam, of course), and slept all night
in the stall with her the night little Robin was foaled, March,
1804—such glowing visions inspired him of the coming prodigy.

Hence, if Maria beat Robin Grey in 1816, it was when Robin
was twelve years old. But there must be some mistake about
it. If reliance can be placed on tradition, it was the boast
of my grandfather to the day of his death, June, 1859, when
in his ninetieth year, that Robin Grey won every race, from
one-quarter to four miles, that he ever entered. In boyhood I
read the worn copy of a famous placard, of which this is the
substance: “Captain Cook’s celebrated ‘Whip’ challenges any
horse, mare or gelding to run any distance, from one-quarter to
four miles, barring Robin Grey.”

Captain Cook was a Virginian, and owned, I think, a famous
mare, “Fanny,” or I may have the names mixed, and give my
early impressions. For more than fifty years the children and
grandchildren of the grand old man were raised on Robin Grey.
No man ever idolized the genus horse as he did—not General
Jackson, nor Hanie, nor Bailie Peyton. I fear he was really
a crank on the subject of the horse, and Robin Grey was his
prophet. Two gentlemen were once visiting his paddock, when one
of them (perhaps in a spirit of fun) discredited a pet of its
owner. Quick as a flash the critic went down. In a moment the
assailant was penitent, led the victim tenderly to the house,
washed the crimson from his face, saying: “I’m sorry—I’m—so
sorry! But you oughtn’t to insult my horses. There now; it’s
all over!” Better offend him personally a thousand times than
to insult his horses.

It was at the old Lexington race track. Robin Grey was there,
and his owner, also, of course. “Hurry up, Mr. Hieronymous! The
other horses are about ready to start,” the judges called.

“Go ahead, gentlemen, whenever you like,” replied the
enthusiast, “a quarter or a half minute, or such a matter,
doesn’t make the least difference to Robin Grey. He’ll be in at
the home stretch.”

I could relate, if you had the patience to read, many amusing
and, to me, at least, thrilling stories of Robin Grey. Mr.
Hieronymous sold a half interest in him to Col. John Hunt,
grandfather of the afterwards famed cavalry leader, Gen. John
Hunt Morgan, such were the exigencies of security debts. But
the old man never loved a child more devotedly than he loved
Robin Grey.

I must modify the statement that Robin Grey never lost a race.
Once, the old Lexington track had been recently repaired and
widened, and a bridge near the first quarter laid across a
gully to supply the necessary width, and covered with dirt.
Unfortunately Robin Grey took this side of the track, went,
heels up, through the treacherous but unsuspected pitfall,
threw his mount and himself to the ground, but was up at once
and waited for his rider to spring again into the saddle,
for Robin had the brains of a statesman. Even then he made
sufficient speed to save his distance.

Please don’t ever tell it, especially to “one of his kinfolks,”
that anything on four feet ever beat Robin Grey! You mustn’t
“insult his horses!”

Sincerely for Trotwood,

C. E. MERRILL.

[Our authority, as may be seen from the chapter quoted, is Hon. Bailey Peyton, now deceased, than whom no more accurate authority on that subject existed. We are glad, however, to publish the above.—Ed.]

* * * * *

_He who jests is weak, and nothing kills greatness like humor._

With Our Writers

The South’s Need for a Magazine of Its Own.

Editor Trotwood’s:

While New York and the East may be the natural publishing
place for American magazines, it should not be forgotten that
the South has within itself many important problems peculiar
to itself. If one should start from the Potomac and travel
southwest two thousand miles, barring mountainous sections,
he would find, generally speaking, less difference in people,
customs, and institutions than he would be going one or two
hundred miles north from that river. Coupled with this fact,
the following story may not be without significance: