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Updated: June 25, 2025
"I suppose our next step is to get to the railway station," she said. "Unless you will condescend to lead me through this assortment of plows, wood-piles, and farm-wagons, I'm inclined to think my next step will be my last. Was ever night so dark?" Her warm, strong fingers clutched his arm and then dropped to his hand.
He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide.
I saw white-haired men and women grasping the harness of the gun-teams or the stirrup- leathers of the troopers, who, themselves exhausted from many days of fighting, slept in their saddles as they rode. I saw springless farm-wagons literally heaped with wounded soldiers with piteous white faces; the bottoms of the wagons leaked and left a trail of blood behind them.
In frontier life it was an every-day experience to make excursions for business or pleasure, singly or in parties, requiring two or three consecutive days, perhaps a night or two of camping out, for which saddle-horses and farm-wagons furnished ready transportation; and nothing was more common than concerted neighborhood efforts for improvement, protection, or amusement.
In the Calle de Alcala, flowing to the Prado out of the Puerta del Sol, there passed a current of farm-carts and farm-wagons more conspicuous than any urban vehicles, as they jingled by, with men and women on their sleigh-belled donkeys, astride or atop the heavily laden panniers.
With some pride I recall the fact that I "ironed" the first farm-wagons, the first two-seated spring-wagon, and the first buggy made at Tuskegee. I also "piped" the school's first bathroom for girls. Later he stated the nature of the work he wanted me to do. I accepted the offer he made me. I was asked to teach in the night-school and instruct in the blacksmith-shop one-half of each week-day.
A few shabby old farm-wagons stood here and there by these fences; the sleepy horses which had drawn them thither having been taken out of the shafts, and tethered in some mysterious way to the hinder part of the wagons. A court was in session; and these were the wagons of lawyers and clients, alike humble in their style of equipage.
There were open and covered outer stairways so laden with vines they could scarce totter to the low heights of the chamber doors on which they opened; and there were open sheds where huge farm-wagons were rolled close to the most modern of Parisian dog-carts.
Caen was as crowded as the inn; at night many made of the open street their bed; his own court-yard was as filled with men as with farm-wagons. It was altogether hopeless as a situation; as a welcome into a strange city, I have experienced none more arctic. I had, however, forgotten that I was travelling with a conqueror; that when Charm smiled she did as she pleased with her world.
Some of us traveled on horseback, and some in farm-wagons secured for the purpose. We did not create the sensation we had anticipated, either on leaving Lexington or along the road; still we had plenty of fun.
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