Part 8

Daniel Drake, "the Franklin of the West," was born at Plainfield, New Jersey, October 20, 1785. When he was but three years old, his family removed to Mayslick, Mason county, Kentucky, where they dwelt in a log cabin for some time. When he was sixteen years of age, Drake went to Cincinnati to study medicine, the city's first medical student. He later attended lectures at the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania. On his return to Kentucky, Dr. Drake practiced his profession near his home at Mayslick, Kentucky, but he shortly afterwards went to Cincinnati, where he became a distinguished physician and author. In 1816 he was appointed professor of materia medica and botany in the medical school of Transylvania University, and he held this chair for one year. He returned to Transylvania, in 1823, and this time he remained for four years. In 1835 Dr. Drake organized the medical department of Cincinnati College. Four years later he went to Louisville to accept the chair of clinical medicine and pathological anatomy in the University of Louisville, which he occupied for ten years. He returned to Cincinnati two years before his death, which occurred there, November 6, 1852. Dr. Drake's publications include _Topography, Climate, and Diseases of Cincinnati_ (1810); _Picture of Cincinnati_ (Cincinnati, 1815); _Practical Essays on Medical Education_ (1832); _Systematic Treatise on the Principal Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America_ (Philadelphia, 1850; 1852), a work which was characterized by Judge James Hall of Cincinnati as "the most important and valuable work ever written in the United States. The subject is large. The work could not be compiled. The subject was new, and the materials were to be collected from original sources, from observation, personal inspection, oral evidence, etc. It occupied many years; and was, probably, in contemplation during the whole or most part of Dr. Drake's long professional life." To-day Dr. Drake's most popular work is _Pioneer Life in Kentucky_, a series of reminiscential letters addressed to his children, concerning early times in Kentucky. It was issued by Robert Clarke, the Cincinnati publisher in his well-known Ohio Valley Historical Series. This is a charming volume and it has been much quoted and praised by Western writers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New York, 1887, v. ii); _Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley_, by W. H. Venable (Cincinnati, 1891); Allibone's _Dictionary of Authors_ (Philadelphia, 1897).

MAYSLICK, KENTUCKY, IN 1800

[From _Pioneer Life in Kentucky_ (Cincinnati, 1870)]

Mayslick, although scarcely a village, was at once an emporium and capital for a tract of country six or eight miles in diameter, and embracing several hundred families, of which those in father's neighborhood were tolerably fair specimens. Uncle Abraham Drake kept a store, and Shotwell and Morris kept taverns; besides them there were a few poor mechanics. Uncle Cornelius Drake was a farmer merely, and lived a little out of the center of the station; the great men of which were the three I have just named. With this limited population, it seems, even down to this time, wonderful to me that such gatherings and such scenes should have been transacted there. They commenced within five years after its settlement, and increasing with the progress of surrounding population, continued in full vigor long after I left home for Cincinnati. It was the place for holding regimental militia musters, when all the boys and old men of the surrounding country, not less than those who stood enrolled, would assemble; and before dispersing at night, the training was quite eclipsed by a heterogeneous drama of foot racing, pony racing, wrestling, fighting, drunkenness and general uproar. It was also a place for political meetings and stump conflict by opposing candidates, and after intellectual performances there generally followed an epilogue of oaths, yells, loud blows, and gnashing of teeth. Singing-schools were likewise held at the same place in a room of Deacon Morris's tavern. I was never a scholar, which I regret, for it has always been a grief with me that I did not learn music in early life. I occasionally attended. As in all country singing-schools, sacred music only was taught, but in general there was not much display of sanctity. I have a distinct remembrance of one teacher only. He was a Yankee, without a family, between forty and fifty years of age, and wore a matted mass of thick hair over the place where men's ears are usually found. Thus protected, his were never seen, and after the opinion spread abroad that by some misfortune they had been cut off, he "cut and run."

The infant capital was, still further, the local seat of justice; and Saturday was for many years, at all times I might say, the regular term time. Instead of trying cases at home, two or three justices of the peace would come to the Lick on that day, and hold their separate courts. This, of course, brought thither all the litigants of the neighborhood with their friends and witnesses; all who wished to purchase at the store would postpone their visit to the same day; all who had to replenish their jugs of whiskey did the same thing; all who had business with others expected to meet them there, as our city merchants, at noon, expect to meet each other on 'change; finally, all who thirsted after drink, fun, frolic, or fighting, of course, were present. Thus Saturday was a day of largely suspended field labor, but devoted to public business, social pleasure, dissipation, and beastly drunkenness. You might suppose that the presence of civil magistrates would have repressed some of these vices, but it was not so. Each day provided a bill of fare for the next. A new trade in horses, another horse race, a cock-fight, or a dog-fight, a wrestling match, or a pitched battle between two bullies, who in fierce encounter would lie on the ground scratching, pulling hair, choking, gouging out each other's eyes, and biting off each other's noses, in the manner of bull-dogs, while a Roman circle of interested lookers-on would encourage the respective gladiators with shouts which a passing demon might have mistaken for those of hell. In the afternoon, the men and boys of business and sobriety would depart, and at nightfall the dissipated would follow them, often two on a horse, reeling and yelling as I saw drunken Indians do in the neighborhood of Fort Leavenworth, in the summer of 1844. But many would be too much intoxicated to mount their horses, and must therefore remain till Sunday morning.

MARY A. HOLLEY

Mrs. Mary Austin Holley, the historian of Texas, was born at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1786. On January 1, 1805, she was married to the Rev. Horace Holley, who, in the fall of that year, became pastor of a church at Greenfield Hill, Connecticut. Mrs. Holley, of course, was in Boston with her husband from 1809 to 1818; and she accompanied him to Lexington, Kentucky, when he accepted the presidency of Transylvania University. Mrs. Holley was one of the few persons whom the eccentric scientist, Rafinesque, set down as having been very kind to him while he was connected with the University. She lived in Lexington until the spring of 1827, when she went with her husband to New Orleans. She wrote a poem, _On Leaving Kentucky_, the first stanza of which is as follows:

Farewell to the land in which broad rivers flow, And vast prairies bloom as in Eden's young day! Farewell to the land in which lofty trees grow, And the vine and the mistletoe's empire display.

She later embarked with her husband for New York, and it was her pen that so vividly described his death on shipboard. After Dr. Holley's death his widow returned to Lexington, Kentucky, and wrote the memoir for Dr. Charles Caldwell's _Discourse on the Genius and Character of the Rev. Horace Holley, LL. D._ (Boston, 1828). Mrs. Holley left Kentucky in 1831 and emigrated to Texas under the protection of her celebrated kinsman, General Stephen Fuller Austin, a Transylvania University man, and the founder of Texas. Her _Texas_ (Lexington, Kentucky, 1836), was one of the first histories of that country ever published. Mrs. Holley was a widely read woman, theology being her favorite study, and, like her husband, she was a Unitarian. In person she was said to be a very charming woman. Mrs. Holley spent the last several years of her life at New Orleans, in which city she died on August 2, 1846.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Transylvanian_ (Lexington, January, 1829); Adams's _Dictionary of American Authors_ (Boston, 1905).

TEXAS WOMEN

[From _Texas_ (Lexington, Kentucky, 1836)]

Living in a wild country under circumstances requiring constant exertion, forms the character to great and daring enterprise. Women thus situated are known to perform exploits, which the effeminate men of populous cities might tremble at. Hence there are more Dianas and _Esther Stanhopes_ than one in Texas. It is not uncommon for ladies to mount their mustangs and hunt with their husbands, and with them to camp out for days on their excursions to the sea shore for fish and oysters. All visiting is done on horseback, and they will go fifty miles to a ball with their silk dresses, made perhaps in Philadelphia or New Orleans, in their saddle-bags. Hardy, vigorous constitutions, free spirits, and spontaneous gaiety are thus induced, and continued a rich legacy to their children, who, it is to be hoped, will sufficiently value the blessing not to squander it away, in their eager search for the luxuries and refinements of polite life. Women have capacity for greatness, but they require occasions to bring it out. They require, perhaps, stronger motives than men--they have stronger barriers to break through of indolence and habit--but, when roused, they are quick to discern and unshrinking to act. _Lot was unfortunate in his wife._ Many a wife in Texas has proved herself the better half, and many a widow's heart has prompted her to noble daring.

Mrs. ---- left her home in Kentucky with her six sons, and _no other jewels_. There was good land and room in Texas. Hither she came with the first settlers, at a time when the Indians were often troublesome by coming in large companies and encamping near an isolated farm, demanding of its helpless proprietors, not then too well provided for, whatever of provisions or other things struck their fancies. One of these _foraging_ parties, not over nice in their demands, stationed themselves in rather too near proximity to the dwelling of this veteran lady. They were so well satisfied with their position, and scoured the place so completely, that she ventured to remonstrate, gently at first, then more vehemently. All would not do: the _pic-nics_ would not budge an inch; and moreover threatened life if she did not forbear from further expressions of impatience. The good woman was _armed_. She buckled on her _breastplate_ of _courage_, if not of _righteousness_, and with her children and women servants, all her household around her, sent for the chief, and very boldly expostulating with him, _commanded_ him to depart on the instant at the peril of his tribe; or by a signal she would call in her whole _people_, numerous and formidable, and exterminate his race. She was no more troubled with the Indians. She lives comfortably with her thriving family and thriving fortune, and with great credit to herself, on the road between Brazoria and San Felipe, in the same house now famed for its hospitality and comfort. It is the usual stopping place for travellers on that route, who are not a little entertained with the border stories and characteristic jests there related, by casual companies meeting for the night and sharing the same apartment. It was thus that the above incident, much more exemplified, was drawn from the hostess herself. A volume of _reminiscences_ thus collected, racy with the marvellous, would not be _unapt_ to modern taste, and the modern science of book-making.

JOHN J. CRITTENDEN

John Jordan Crittenden, a Kentucky statesman and orator of national reputation, was born near Versailles, Kentucky, September 10, 1787. He was graduated from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, studied law, and was admitted to the Frankfort bar. Crittenden served in the War of 1812; and in 1816 he was a member of the Kentucky legislature. In the following year he was elected United States Senator from Kentucky, his party, the Whig, then being in power in this State. From 1827 to 1829 Crittenden was United States Attorney for the district of Kentucky; and in 1835 he was again sent to the Senate, with Henry Clay as his colleague. President William Henry Harrison made him his Attorney-General, in 1841, and he resigned his seat in the Senate. When John Tyler succeeded to the presidency six months later, on the death of Harrison, Crittenden withdrew from the cabinet portfolio, and he was almost immediately returned to the Senate by the legislature of Kentucky. He served until 1848, when he was elected Governor of Kentucky. Governor Crittenden was the most distinguished, if not indeed the ablest, chief executive this Commonwealth has ever known. He resigned the governorship, in 1850, in order to become President Fillmore's Attorney-General, which position he held for three years. In 1855 Crittenden was for the fourth time elected United States Senator from Kentucky. As the war between the States approached, Senator Crittenden, though a Southerner, chose the cause of the Union, lining up with the administration heart and soul. In the beginning he did his utmost to prevent the war, and, failing, he exerted his entire energies to aid Abraham Lincoln and the North to prosecute it. In 1860 the Senator urged his famous Compromise, providing for the reëstablishment of the old slave-line of 36' 30 N., and for the enforcement of the fugitive-slave laws, but it was never moulded into law. The last two years of his life were spent as a member of the lower House of Congress, where he continued his fight for the supremacy of the Constitution. Senator Crittenden died near Frankfort, Kentucky, July 26, 1863, thus surviving his greatest friend and fellow patriot, Henry Clay, more than eleven years.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Life of John J. Crittenden_, by Mrs. Chapman Coleman (Philadelphia, 1871); _History of Kentucky_, by R. H. Collins (Covington, 1882).

EULOGY UPON ASSOCIATE JUSTICE McKINLEY

[From _The Life of John J. Crittenden_, edited by his daughter, Mrs. Chapman Coleman (Philadelphia, 1871)]

At the opening of the court this morning, Mr. Crittenden, the Attorney-General of the United States, addressed the court as follows:

"Since its adjournment yesterday, the members of the bar and officers of the court held a meeting and adopted resolutions expressive of their high sense of the public and private worth of the Hon. John McKinley, one of the justices of this court, and their deep regret at his death. By the same meeting I was requested to present those resolutions to the court, and to ask that they might be entered on its records, and I now rise to perform that honored task.

"Besides the private grief which naturally attends it, the death of a member of this court, which is the head of the great, essential, and vital department of the government, must always be an event of public interest and importance.

"I had the good fortune to be acquainted with Judge McKinley from my earliest manhood. In the relations of private life he was frank, hospitable, affectionate. In his manners he was simple and unaffected, and his character was uniformly marked with manliness, integrity, and honor. Elevation to the bench of the Supreme Court made no change in him. His honors were borne meekly, without ostentation or presumption.

"He was a candid, impartial, and righteous judge. Shrinking from no responsibility, he was fearless in the performance of his duty, seeking only to do right, and fearing nothing but to do wrong. Death has now set her seal to his character, making it unchangeable forever; and I think it may be truly inscribed on his monument that as a private gentleman and as a public magistrate he was without fear and without reproach.

"This occasion cannot but remind us of other afflicting losses which have recently befallen us. The present, indeed, has been a sad year for the profession of the law. In a few short months it has been bereaved of its brightest and greatest ornaments. Clay, Webster, and Sergeant have gone to their immortal rest in quick succession. We had scarcely returned from the grave of one of them till we were summoned to the funeral of another. Like bright stars they have sunk below the horizon, and have left the land in widespread gloom. This hall that knew them so well shall know them no more. Their wisdom has no utterance now, and the voice of their eloquence shall be heard here no more forever.

"This hall itself seems as though it was sensible of its loss, and even these marble pillars seem to sympathize as they stand around us like so many majestic mourners.

"But we will have consolation in the remembrance of these illustrious men. Their _names_ will remain to us and be like a light kindled in the sky to shine upon us and to guide our course. We may hope, too, that the memory of them and their great examples will create a virtuous emulation which may raise up men worthy to be their successors in the service of their country, its constitution, and its laws.

"For this digression, and these allusions to Clay, Webster, and Sergeant, I hope the occasion may be considered as a sufficient excuse, and I will not trespass by another word, except only to move that these resolutions in relation to Judge McKinley, when they shall have been read by the clerk, may be entered on the records of this court."

JOHN M. HARNEY

John Milton Harney, the first of the Kentucky poets to win and retain a wide reputation, a man with the divine afflatus, whose whole body of song is slender but of real worth, was born near Georgetown, Delaware, March 9, 1789. He was the second son of Major Thomas Harney, of Revolutionary War fame, and the elder brother of General William S. Harney, a hero of Cerro Gordo. When John Milton Harney was but two years old, his family emigrated to Tennessee, and later removed to Louisiana. He studied medicine and settled at Bardstown, Kentucky. In 1814 Dr. Harney married a daughter of Judge John Rowan, the early Kentucky statesman; and her death four years later was such a shock to her husband that he was compelled to abandon his practice, and seek solace in travel and new scenes. Dr. Harney spent some time in England, and on his return to America he settled at Savannah, Georgia. He over-exerted himself at a disastrous fire in Savannah, which resulted in a violent fever and ended in breaking his health. He returned to Bardstown, Kentucky, became a convert to Roman Catholicism, and in that place he died, January 15, 1825, when but thirty-five years of age. At the age of twenty-three years, Dr. Harney wrote _Crystalina, a Fairy Tale_, in six cantos, but his extreme sensitiveness caused him to hold it in manuscript for four years, or until 1816, when it was issued anonymously at New York. This work was highly praised by Rufus W. Griswold, John Neal, and other well-known critics, but the unfavorable criticism far outweighed the favorable criticism, so the author held, and he published nothing more in book form; and he did all in his power to suppress the edition of _Crystalina_. William Davis Gallagher, poet and critic of a later time in the West, went over Dr. Harney's manuscripts and from them rescued his masterpiece, the exquisite _Echo and the Lover_. This Gallagher published in his _Western Literary Journal_ for 1837--the first form in which the public saw it. No Western poem has had a wider audience than the _Echo_. It has been parodied in Europe and America many times, and is the finest expression of Dr. Harney's genius. It is to be regretted that no comprehensive account of the poet's life and literary labors has come down to posterity. As a poet and as a man his merits were of the truest sort, but a handful of facts, a suppressed book, a lyric or so, are all that have been brought to the attention of the literary world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Poets and Poetry of the West_, by W. T. Coggeshall (Columbus, Ohio, 1860); _Blades o' Bluegrass_, by Fannie P. Dickey (Louisville, 1892).

ECHO AND THE LOVER

[From _The Poets and Poetry of the West_, edited by W. T. Coggeshall (Columbus, Ohio, 1860)]

_Lover._ Echo! mysterious nymph, declare Of what you're made and what you are-- _Echo._ "Air!"

_Lover._ 'Mid airy cliffs, and places high, Sweet Echo! listening, love, you lie-- _Echo._ "You lie!"

_Lover._ You but resuscitate dead sounds-- Hark! how my voice revives, resounds! _Echo._ "Zounds!"

_Lover._ I'll question you before I go-- Come, answer me more apropos! _Echo._ "Poh! poh!"

_Lover._ Tell me, fair nymph, if e'er you saw So sweet a girl as Phoebe Shaw! _Echo._ "Pshaw!"

_Lover._ Say, what will win that frisking coney Into the toils of matrimony! _Echo._ "Money!"

_Lover._ Has Phoebe not a heavenly brow? Is it not white as pearl--as snow? _Echo._ "Ass, no!"

_Lover._ Her eyes! Was ever such a pair? Are the stars brighter than they are? _Echo._ "They are!"

_Lover._ Echo, you lie, but can't deceive me; Her eyes eclipse the stars, believe me-- _Echo._ "Leave me!"

_Lover._ But come, you saucy, pert romancer, Who is as fair as Phoebe? Answer. _Echo._ "Ann, sir!"

THE WHIPPOWIL

[From the same]

There is a strange, mysterious bird, Which few have seen, but all have heard: He sits upon a fallen tree, Through all the night, and thus sings he: Whippowil! Whippowil! Whippowil!

Despising show, and empty noise, The gaudy fluttering thing he flies: And in the echoing vale by night Thus sings the pensive anchorite: Whippowil!

Oh, had I but his voice and wings, I'd envy not a bird that sings; But gladly would I flit away, And join the wild nocturnal lay: Whippowil!

The school-boy, tripping home in haste, Impatient of the night's repast, Would stop to hear my whistle shrill, And answer me with mimic skill: Whippowil!

The rich man's scorn, the poor man's care, Folly in silk, and Wisdom bare, Virtue on foot, and Vice astride, No more should vex me while I cried: Whippowil!

How blest!--Nor loneliness nor state, Nor fame, nor wealth, nor love, nor hate, Nor av'rice, nor ambition vain, Should e'er disturb my tranquil strain: Whippowil! Whippowil! Whippowil!

SYLPHS BATHING

[From _Crystalina_ (New York, 1816)]

The shores with acclamations rung, As in the flood the playful damsels sprung: Upon their beauteous bodies, with delight, The billows leapt. Oh, 'twas a pleasant sight To see the waters dimple round, for joy, Climb their white necks, and on their bosoms toy: Like snowy swans they vex'd the sparkling tide, Till little rainbows danced on every side. Some swam, some floated, some on pearly feet Stood sidelong, smiling, exquisitely sweet.

GEORGE ROBERTSON