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Yet Phil was by no means an idler; he had developed a great business shrewdness, and two or three times in the week drove over to a neighboring river-town to look after the shipments to the West Indies in which he was now interested in company with the Squire. But this had not forbidden a little cursory reading of a sentimental kind.
It is full of variety, full of incident, full of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out longer than any other important river-town, and saw warfare in all its phases, both land and water the siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine. The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is here. Over the great gateway is this inscription:
It had its two little white meeting-houses, Baptist and Congregational, a modest academy of learning, a country tavern, and its full quota of New England customs, traditions and ideas. Nine daily stages passed over this highway. Families moving from one river-town to another usually transported their goods by the flat-boats on the river.
The taste for whiskey was universal, and large quantities were manufactured in rude stills, not only for shipment down the Mississippi, but for local consumption. Frequenters of the river-town taverns called for their favorite brands "Race Horse," "Moral Suasion," "Vox Populi," "Pig and Whistle," or "Split Ticket," as the case might be.
The country is full of these geographical nightmares, the necessary result of freedom of nomenclature bestowed by circumstances upon minds equally destitute of taste or education. There they sold their boat, no difficult task, for a canoe was a staple article in any river-town, and again set out "the old way, over the sand-ridges, for Petersburg.
On Saturday, the 18th day of June, 1859, the "State Banner and Delphian Oracle," published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement which involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of a small community.
If he were witty, and knew how to tell the good story of which each one was certain to remind him, all went well, and the fame of that panorama spread far and wide. If, on the other hand, he was prosy, and offered only dry explanations of his pictures, the impatient river-town audience did not hesitate to express their dissatisfaction, and the exhibition was apt to close with a riot.
It is full of variety, full of incident, full of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out longer than any other important river-town, and saw warfare in all its phases, both land and water the siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine. The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is here. Over the great gateway is this inscription:
On Saturday, the 18th day of June, 1859, the "State Banner and Delphian Oracle," published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement which involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of a small community.
If at the same time an important river-town could be stranded and left far inland, the happiness of the mischief-making giant was complete; and for many miles it would swirl and eddy and boil and ripple with exuberant glee over the success of its efforts.
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