A Dream of Empire; Or, The House of Blennerhassett — John Shaqi
A Dream of Empire; Or, The House of BlennerhassettVenable, William Henry
General
A Dream of Empire; Or, The House of Blennerhassett
Venable, William Henry
Blennerhassett, Harman, 1765-1831 -- Fiction
Seldom had genial Grif Yeatman welcomed guests more desirable and less
like one another than were the strongly individualized men who came
from the flatboat to his tavern to take temporary lodging before
hunting up the several citizens they wished to meet.
Burr's arrival in the embryo Queen City of the West was noised from
house to house, and within an hour many citizens had called to shake
hands. The suave New York politician had partisan adherents and
personal friends in the Buckeye State. Among these was John Smith,
whose acquaintance he had made in Washington--the Hon. John Smith,
one of the first two senators representing Ohio in Congress.
Burr procured a fine saddle-horse, and after bidding good-by to
Arlington set out to visit the Senator who lived some twelve miles
from town. The solitary horseman was not sorry to leave behind him the
raw metropolis, the dirty streets of which were lined with log cabins
and dingy white frame houses. Beyond Deer Creek the horseman spurred
eastward along a black loamy wagon road, trotting through groves and
half-cleared fields until he passed a small hamlet bearing the great
name Columbia. Beyond this cluster of habitations lay Turkey Bottom,
so named on account of the wild flocks which made it their resort.
Burr selected the most distinctly marked of the several discernible
trails and traces in the mazy wilderness before him. Uncertain wheel
tracks indicated that the backwoods farmers, whose cabins were never
less than a mile apart, took various routes, according to their fancy
or the exigencies of the season. At one place a tree, recently blown
down, lay across the bridle-path, and, while guiding his horse around
this obstacle the rider saw a brown bear lurch off, swaying its head
in sulky humor.
The grandeur of the primeval solitude impressed Burr more profoundly
than he had imagined possible. The solemn majesty of the brotherhood
of lofty trees around and above him inspired awe. A sense of
bewilderment stole upon him. "Am I lost in the woods?" he wondered,
looking around for signs of human life. So strange did everything
appear that he was in doubt whether the log house not a hundred feet
ahead of him was an actual structure. The house was real, and in the
dooryard he saw a human being busy about some task. He rode up and
asked the way to Senator Smith's.
"Smith? You mean Elder Smith?" gossipped a woman, pausing from her
soap-making, near an ash-hopper. "Some do call him Senator, and some
call him Preacher, but most call him Elder Smith or else plain John."
"Does he preach?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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