There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels in
America, had its large dining-room for a public table. It was
an odd, shambling, low-roofed outhouse, half cow-shed and half
kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas tablecloth, and tin
sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at
supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and
some eatables prepared and they were by this time nearly ready.
He had ordered "wheat bread and chicken fixings" in preference
to "corn bread and common doings." The latter kind of refection
includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends broiled
ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other viands of
that nature as may be supposed by a tolerably wide poetical
construction "to fix" a chicken comfortably in the digestive
organs of any lady or gentleman.[11]
A few months later, Trumbull made another journey to Springfield to be
joined in marriage to Miss Julia M. Jayne, a daughter of Dr. Gershom
Jayne, a physician of that city--a young lady who had received her
education at Monticello Seminary, with whom he passed twenty-five years
of unalloyed happiness. The marriage took place on the 21st of June,
1843, and Norman B. Judd served as groomsman. Miss Jayne had served in
the capacity of bridesmaid to Mary Todd at her marriage to Abraham
Lincoln on the 4th of November preceding. There was a wedding journey to
Trumbull's old home in Connecticut, by steamboat from St. Louis to
Wheeling, Virginia, by stage over the mountains to Cumberland, Maryland,
and thence by rail via Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. After
visiting his own family, a journey was made to Mrs. Trumbull's relatives
at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, including her great-grandfather, a marvel
of industry and longevity, ninety-two years of age, a cooper by trade,
who was still making barrels with his own hands. This fact is mentioned
in a letter from Trumbull to his father, dated Barry, Michigan, August
20, 1843, at which place he had stopped on his homeward journey to visit
his brothers. One page of this letter is given up to glowing accounts
of the infant children of these brothers. And here it is fitting to say
that all these faded and time-stained epistles to his father and his
brothers and sisters, from first to last, are marked by tender
consideration and unvarying love and generosity. Not a shadow passed
between them.
The return journey from Michigan to Belleville was made by stage-coach.
October 12, 1843, Mrs. Trumbull writes to her husband's sisters in
Colchester that she has arrived in her new home. "We are boarding in a
private family," she says, "have two rooms which Mrs. Blackwell, the
landlady, has furnished neatly, and for my part, I am anticipating a
very delightful winter. Lyman is now at court, which keeps him very much
engaged, and I am left to enjoy myself as best I may until G. comes
around this afternoon to play chess with me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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