Prasville

“ His plan was quite simple: if any one met him, he would pretend to be a tradesman. But there was no need for this subterfuge. He was able, after crossing an empty hall, to enter a dining-room which also had no one in it, but which, through the panes of a glass partition that separated the dining-room from the study, afforded him a view of Prasville and his five companions. ”

“ The great leaders in American politics had come oftener than not from the country, he reflected. Fraserville, in Dan's cogitations, might, as Bassett's star rose, prove to be another Springfield or Fremont or Canton, shrouding a planet destined to a brilliant course toward the zenith. ”

“ The local tradition of a Spreswell close to the village of Wycliffe, which has beeji accepted by Dr.Vaughan, and also by Professor Lechler, presents various difficulties, and must be treated with particular caution, because one would be decidedly glad to believe it. According to this tradition, Spreswell was no mere figment of a name, and still less Ipreswell or Hipswell, but an actual hamlet or thorp, within the manor of the Wycliffes, and about half a mile from the present village of Wycliffe-on-Tees. ”

“ Looking upwards, a reach of five or six miles presents itself, and turning the eye to the left, Jeffersonville, a neat village of thirty houses, in Indiana, about a mile distant, is next seen. The eye still turning a little more to the left, next rests upon a high point where general Clark first encamped his little army, about thirty years ago, when he descended the river to make a campaign against the Indians, at which time Louisville, and almost the whole of Kentucky was a wilderness covered with forests. ”

“ The river scenery is very beautiful to day, lined with thriving farms, dotted with pretty villas and towns, having a back ground of those peculiar green hills which occur upon this river called the Ohio hills. Among the towns we passed were New Richmond, twenty-one miles from Cincinnati, Moscow, Mechanicsville, Augusta &c. &c. Maysville is quite a large town in Kentucky which looked very gay as the sun, setting over the shadowy hills lighted up its scarlet brick houses and gave a brighter tint to the cotton wood groves with which they were surrounded. ”

“ The only street in Oroville faces the river, and the buildings string for two or three blocks along modest bluffs. Not a soul was anywhere in sight when Whispering Smith rode into town, save that across the street from where he dismounted and tied his horse three men stood in front of the Blackbird. ”

“ In April, 1838, I took leave of New York, and, with a small colony, emigrated once more to Missouri. We settled in Caldwell County in May. Here I again commenced anew; built a house and made a farm. I also devoted much of my time to the ministry; I visited many different neighborhoods, and was everywhere received with hospitality, and listened to with interest and attention.
On the 4th of July, 1838, thousands of the citizens who belonged to the Church of the Saints assembled at the City of Far West, the county seat of Caldwell, in order to celebrate our nation's birth. ”

“ The summer of 1775 also witnessed the establishment of many other stations, including that of Louisville, on the Ohio, which soon became a kind of rendezvous for hunters, and a harbor of refuge for emigrants seeking a suitable site for the building of their new homes in the wilderness. Gradually the forests of oak, maple, walnut, etc., of Ohio, the now well-cultivated agricultural districts of Kentucky, and the less fertile cretaceous regions of Tennessee, became dotted with the homes of settlers, each of which in time sent forth new pioneers yet further to the westward. ”

“ We here overtook a covered flat, with two families of the name of Frazey, migrating from the neighbourhood of Elizabethtown in New Jersey, to Cincinnatti in Ohio. They had embarked at Redstone on the Monongahela. [53] The father of one of the families was dangerously ill with a nervous fever and deranged in his intellects.
Hog island on the left just below Neville’s island, is very small, and immediately below it also on the left we passed Middletown, lately laid out, containing ten houses including barns, and opposite to it, a Mr. White’s finely situated house. ”

“ Marksville, although occupying a prominent position, and standing out in impressive italics on the map of Louisiana, is, in fact, but a small and insignificant hamlet. Aside from the tavern, kept by a jolly and generous boniface, the court house, inhabited by lawless cows and swine in the seasons of vacation, and a high gallows, with its dissevered rope dangling in the air, there is little to attract the attention of the stranger. ”

“ But I never heard your name, sir.”
Parslewe nodded, and remarking that there was no need to show us round, he’d prefer to be left to himself, led us into the hall and up a great staircase to the state apartments. It was evident at once that he knew the whole place, and for the next hour he was in his element as guide while we were lost in wonder and admiration at the things he showed us. And we were examining the very bed on which Queen Elizabeth had stretched her limbs when the housekeeper came in, more interested in Parslewe than ever. ”

“ No one knows why New England town halls do burn up, but this has been for a long time their characteristic. Ancient houses, their yards full of flowering shrubs, slumbered under the shady elms. A motor-car seemed almost an impertinence here, so much did one appear to have turned back the hand of time.
Paul, whose senses and sensibilities had all been sharpened by the exciting occurrences of the day, fancied himself in a fabled country. The town had a dream-like mellowness that ill accorded with the fiction common to New England that had fallen Paul's way. ”

“ Men from each colony were arriving daily, and early in 1861 there could not have been less than 13,000 (thirteen thousand) souls located within the radius of the goldfields. The first gentleman, or at any rate, one of the first that appeared amongst us to teach us to “love our neighbour as ourselves,” and to inculcate divine knowledge into the hearts of the multitude was a diminutive cleric hailing from the ranks of the great John Wesley. He took up his quarters at the Great Eastern for the night, and was accommodated with a shake-down on the billiard table. ”

“ The mere substitution of one word for another may seem a light matter to a man that has never composed anything more literary than an obituary for the Western Advocate of Sister Jane Malinda Sprague, who was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1816, removed with her parents at a tender age to New Sardis, Washington County, Ohio, where, etc., etc. ”

“ Parsons gave a satisfied smile, walked quietly out of the empty house, re-lighted his pipe and resumed his walk.
It's hardly likely that Mr. Parsons thought of renting the empty house next door to Azalea Lodge, but he walked past at least four times that afternoon. He went home to Matilda Street on the top of an omnibus, and then, like a respectable man as he was, he sat down to a good substantial tea.
Before commencing a campaign a great general sits down to think it out. This is exactly what Mr. Parsons did. ”

“ After making our escape into the county of Clay—being reduced to the lowest poverty—I made a living by day labor, jobbing, building, or wood cutting, till some time in the winter of 1834, when a general Conference was held at my house, in which it was decided that two of the Elders should be sent to Ohio, in order to counsel with President Smith and the Church at Kirtland, and rake some measures for the relief or restoration of the people thus plundered and driven from their homes. The question was put to the Conference: "Who would volunteer to perform so great a journey?" ”

“ In the party were Ross, Shif'less Sol, the schoolmaster, Henry and Paul. Wareville had no white neighbor near and all the settlements lay to the north or east. Beyond them, across the Ohio, was the formidable cloud of Indian tribes, the terror of which always overhung the settlers. West of them was a vast waste of forest spreading away far beyond the Mississippi, and, so it was supposed, inhabited only by wild animals. ”

“ The better to cover his design, he gave out, that it was necessary for the French to settle on the banks of the rivulet, where stood the Great Village, and the abode of the Grand Sun. The Commandant, doubtless, supposed that he was speaking to a slave, whom we may command in a tone of absolute authority. But he knew not that the natives of Louisiana are such enemies to a state of slavery, that they prefer death itself thereto; above all, the Suns, accustomed to govern despotically, have still a greater aversion to it. ”

“ The feasts which I saw celebrated in the chief village of the Natchez, which is the residence of the Great Sun, are celebrated in the same manner in all the villages of the nation, which are each governed by a Sun, who is subordinate to the Great Sun, and acknowledge his absolute authority.
It is not to be conceived how exact these people are in assigning the pre-eminence to the men. In every assembly, whether of the whole nation in general, or of several families together, or of one family, the youngest boys have the preference to the women of the most advanced age ”

“ On the 6th of June, 1838, the white frost lay on the west side of Pittsburg roofs as we steamed away from her wharf, bound for Louisville, where my husband proposed going into a business already established by his brother Samuel.
On the boat, all the way down the river, the general topic of conversation was the contrast between the desolate slave-cursed shores of Kentucky, and the smiling plenty of the opposite bank; but Louisville was largely settled by Northern people, and was to prove an oasis in the desert of slavery. ”

“ There is an infinite difference between floating down to New Orleans in your delightful barge, and jogging homeward a thousand miles on horseback. That interminable stretch of dreary wilderness from Natchez to Nashville, along the Indian trail, over sandy wastes, through pine woods, was intolerable. I was glad enough to reach Tennessee and old Kentucky. The people of Frankfort treated [Pg 125] me very handsomely, as did those of Lexington. I paid my respects to the local idol, the young Virginia orator and rising lawyer, Henry Clay. That man is a prodigy—he will make his mark. ”

“ However, he did describe the residence as being a very large and very handsome one, standing in a somewhat secluded part of the outskirts and not far from where a railroad track and an overhead viaduct were.
“This, then, is the favor I would ask of you: If the lady is as prominently connected as I had reason to believe from Mr. Braswell’s statements, I assume you know her already. If not, I take it that it should not be a very difficult matter to locate one whose character and attainments must have given her a high standing among your good [26] citizens. ”

“ Bidwell, Ohio, was an old town as the ages of towns go in the Central West, long before Hugh McVey, in his search for a place where he could penetrate the wall that shut him off from humanity, went there to live and to try to work out his problem. It is a busy manufacturing town now and has a population of nearly a hundred thousand people ”

“ Bare-legged boys, indeed, climbed up at the back of the carriage, and dark visages were thrust in at the windows; but as Passmore was perfectly ready and willing to shout viva from his stentorian lungs for any one and every one whom the mob chose to favour, no serious opposition was made to his onward progress. The bridge was safely although not rapidly passed over, the rabble were left behind, and the coachman, still seeking in the suburb, as he had done in the city, the quietest streets, had soon almost reached the nearer end of the Calle de San José. ”

“ Edward looked on the kneeling host, and turning to Umfraville, exclaimed “See! Yon men kneel to ask mercy.” “You say truth, sire,” answered the knight of Prudhoe; “they ask mercy—but not of you.”
The last Umfraville, who died in 1381, left a widow, the Countess Maud, who married a Percy of Alnwick, and so the castle passed into the hands of that family, in whose possession it still remains.
When Odinel de Umfraville was building the keep of his castle, every one in the neighbourhood was pressed into the service, and all lent their aid except the men of Wylam. ”

“ WILLIAM A. PARSHALL is a scion of an old and distinguished Orange County family. Jonathan Parshall, his great great grandfather, moved to Little Britain in the town of New Windsor, from Long Island, in 1737. His son David fought for American freedom in the Revolutionary War. Mr. Parshall's father, Caleb Parshall, was born on the old homestead, but when he reached man's estate he moved to the farm in Walden, where William A. was born, December 9, 1865. ”

“ Within old Bytown's classic ground;
And now I'll close my roll of fame
With a most well-remember'd name,
A man of dignity supreme
Rises to view in memory's dream,
Ultra in Toryism's tariff,
Was Simon Fraser, Carleton's Sheriff,
Personified by the third vowel,
Forerunner of W.F. Powell,
A high and most important man
In the renown'd old Fraser Clan,
Who well had worn the Highland tartan,
For he was bold as any Spartan,
And did his duty mildly, gravely,
And wore the sword and cocked hat bravely. ”