Voices from the Past Part 140

I longed to abolish all kinds of slavery.

Some of my black friends were slaves; I wanted to abolish their kind of slavery. There is the slavery of poverty. Men and women eating potatoes day after day.

So, I was haunted.

Could I become man's benefactor?

Lying in my attic, on my bed of corn shocks, I confronted log walls-- strong log walls.

August 9, 1863

On my circuit rides, when weather favored, when there was enough time, I stopped at a grove, dismounted, walked to a tree deep in the grove, a tree I had blazed when county surveying; I walked on to the second blaze that marked a green pool. It was a small shallow pool rimmed with short gra.s.s. Dragonflies came there. Crickets lived near there. Standing there, sitting there, I found meaning, a meaning I still respect.

Tell me, ye winged winds

That round my pathway roar,

Do ye not know some spot

Where mortals weep no more?

The White House

August 12, 1863

I suppose I may as well confess: I have always envied my partner his marital luck: Billy Herndon married Nancy Maxcy, back in '40, a quiet beauty, a gentle beauty, blonde as corn silk, ready with dreamy smiles. She gave Billy rare personal happiness, made it easier for him after annoying legal squabbles, after long circuit rides.

She gave him six healthy children. She was a giver in so many ways-alms for all. Theirs has been a continual romance.

The mind does tricks. I am back in my boyhood cabin. A prairie schooner stands outside. A man and woman have unhitched their oxen team, their little girl is made to feel at home by my mother. She is eight; I am eight or nine, I can't remember. I remember that she was pretty.

We played together all day. Then, came sunup, the ox team hauled away the schooner...my love was gone. I dreamed about her for weeks, happy dreams; in one of those repeated dreams we eloped, we went to California, we built a beautiful home...

My love for her has never gone away.

August 14, 1863

Many times Jenny plodded my rural circuit.

Usually, I gave her the reins. Every stopping place, store, tavern, church, saloon, school, was fixed in her brain. If I had to check her it was for some washout, new ruts in the road, a downhill run, a flooded creek. As we plodded along I read my law books or played the harmonica. June, July, August...January and February, we rocked in that black buggy with its scarlet spokes. I kept it in good shape but I never did eliminate the squeaks in the right rear spring.

In those days prosperity was slow in arriving. I settled my cases under trees, in churches, in schools and stores-for barter and for cash.

Mary never neglected my food hamper; always something tasty, with an apple or a carrot or two tossed in for Jenny. We would stop in a patch of woods on a hot day; I would yank off my boots and rest my corns. Thunderstorms often fell on us; at the nearest stable I would rub Jenny until she was dry, and she would look and look at me as I rubbed her.

Willie liked to accompany me on our summer jaunts; he got to know the lone dead pine; the maple grove at Dobson's Creek; he knew the roosting place of the red hawk, the place of the squirrels. We often saw fox and deer. I might read Fennimore Cooper to him as we rode along.

"...Papa, look at those pigeons...a whole cloud of them."

Willie's favorite topic was the railroad, the locomotives. He knew every type of engine, their speed, their horsepower. "Wonder horses," he called them.

"All aboard," he would shout, as we got into our buggy.

"Let's go...the Indians are comin'."

Who owns Jenny now?

Where is she?

She's about eleven years old.

The White House

August 29, 1863

Glancing through a Greek history, I found something Euripides said in one of his plays:

Slavery, that thing of evil, by its nature evil,

forcing submission from man to what no man should yield to.

To set men free-that is the greatest goal any man could achieve.

But slavery is part of our issue. This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.

Tuesday

I like to forget East Salem's juvenility, sparring, boxing, wrestling. Pranks could be alarmingly stupid.

There was Ike and his pony. He was fool enough to try to ride his piebald through a bonfire of shavings and cornstalks-to settle a bet. He raced across a field toward the blaze; just as he reached it, the pony bucked and pitched Ike into the fire. The onlookers stomped and roared and whistled. I was angry and took Ike to Dr.

Samuel's office, where the doctor shaved his head and salved his scorched face and hands.

I saw no profit, no form of progress in Salem's rowdies. I preferred the simple things in life, a job, a long walk, hills, sun. As county surveyor I communicated through transit and tapes, through timberland acreage.

They arranged life in useable proportions. This was a function beyond the village. To measure land was to measure the future. Precision spelled confidence.