American fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, American
The body was placed in a rude coffin, and borne to the grave on a litter
of spades, followed by every man in camp, the colonel supporting the
only family mourner. Each man threw a shovelful of dirt upon the coffin
before the filling began. As the last of the surface of the coffin
disappeared from view, Pet raised a loud cry and wept bitterly, at which
operation he was joined by the whole party.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WARDELOW’S BOY.
NEW Boston has once been the most promising of the growing cities of the
West, according to some New York gentleman who constituted a land
improvement company, distributed handsome maps gratis, and courted
susceptible Eastern editors. Its water-power was unrivaled; ground for
all desirable public buildings, and for a handsome park with ready-grown
trees and a natural lake, had been securely provided for by the terms of
the company’s charter; building material abounded; the water was good;
the soil of unequaled fertility; while the company, with admirable
forethought, had a well-stocked store on the ground, and had made
arrangements to send to the town a skillful physician, and a popular
preacher.
A reasonable number of colonists found their way to the ground in the
pleasant Spring time, and, in spite of sundry local peculiarities not
mentioned in the company’s circular, they might have remained, had not a
mighty freshet, in June, driven them away, and even saved some of them
the trouble of moving their houses.
When, however, most of the residences floated down the river, some of
them bearing their owners on their roofs, such of the inhabitants as had
money left the promised land for ever; while the others made themselves
such homes as they could in the nearest settlements which were above
water, and fraternized with the natives through the medium of that
common bond of sympathy in the Western lowlands, the ague.
Only a single one of the original inhabitants remained, and he, although
he might have chosen the best of the abandoned houses for his residence,
or even the elegant but deserted “company’s store,” continued to inhabit
the cabin he had built upon his arrival. The solid business men of the
neighboring town of Mount Pisgah, situated upon a bluff, voted him a
fool whenever his name was mentioned; but the wives of these same men,
when they chanced to see old Wardelow passing by, with the wistful face
he always wore, looked after him tenderly, and never lost an opportunity
to speak to him kindly. When they met at tea-parties, or quilting-bees,
or sewing-societies, or in other gatherings exclusively feminine, there
were not a few of them who had the courage to say that the world would
be better if more men were like old Wardelow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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