Part 24 (1/2)
There was athered about the life of Judge Arrington Born of hue in the pine forests of North Carolina, with no advantages other than those coo, fro he apparently dwelt apart froe he removed with his father's family to the then wilds of the Southwest
There, upon the very border line of civilization, his associates for a tiuard, the adventurers and soldiers of fortune that in a large measure constituted the civilization of the southwestern frontier during the early years of the last century
With his early environment, his subsequent career seems a marvel
It can only be explained upon the supposition that through with them, he was not of them
”His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart”
His coes of early scholastic training, he was, fro, an omnivorous reader He cared little for the alluree of seventeen, he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was soon after licensed to preach For four years he rode the circuit, enduring all the disco His fieldupon the Rio Grande and inhabited by Indians Untutored audiences were stirred to the depths by his fervid appeals Church buildings were yet in the future; the congregations assembled in God's first temples, and listened with rapt attention to the fiery eloquence of the delicate, youthful entle, delicate, as brilliant as a comet, and almost as erratic Without research or mental discipline, he could electrify an audience beyond all living men, and arouse in the minds of those who heard him the wildest enthusiasm”
For some cause, possibly never to be explained, he suddenly abandoned the an the study of the law, and when a little past the age of twenty-one, was admitted to the bar After some years of successful practice in the rude frontier courts of Arkansas, he ree, and assigned to the Rio Grande circuit In addition to his judicial labors, he norote and published so sketches of border life, vivid pictures of conditions then existing in the Southwest ain, a people upon whohtly, ere in large degree a law unto thee was virtue
One of his publications, ”Paul Denton,” still has a place in many of our libraries It is, in part, a narrative of the thrilling experiences of an early Methodist circuit-rider--presumably himself --upon the southwest border In this will be found his e Dent, ”was so faeneration owing to its frequent declah”
The hero of the book, Paul Denton, had been announced to preach at a faood liquor” was pro the sermon, a desperado demanded: ”Mr Denton, where is the liquor you promised?”
”There!” answered the preacher in tones of thunder, and pointing hiscolumns from the bosom of the earth with a sound like a shout of joy
”There,” he repeated, ”there is the liquor which God the Eternal brews for all his children Not in the siases, surrounded with stench of sickening odors and corruptions, doth your Father in heaven prepare the precious essence of life--pure cold water; but in the green glade and grassy dell, where the red-deer wanders and the child loves to play, there God brews it; and down, lon, in the deepest valleys, where the fountains h upon the old in the sun, where the storm-cloud broods and the thunder-storms crash; and far out on the wide, wild sea, where the hurricane howlsthe e of life, health-giving water
”And everywhere it is a thing of life and beauty--glea in the ice ge a golden veil over the sun or a white gauze around the ht snow-curtain softly about the wintry world; and weaving the many-colored bohose warp is the rain-drops of earth, whose woof is the sunbeam of heaven, all checkered over with the mystic hand of refraction
”Still it is beautiful, that blessed life-water! No poisonous bubbles are on its brink; its foalass; pale s and starving orphans weep not burning tears into its depths; no drunkard's shrieking ghost frorave curses it in the world of eternal despair
Beautiful, pure, blessed, and glorious Speak out, e it for the deo, rests all that is htly on his ashes, ye rave, ye oodness, for he was your brother!”
XXI HIGH DEBATE IN THE MOUNTAINS
COLONEL WOOLFORD, A HERO UNDER GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR--HIS MANNER OF FIGHTING--HIS DEFENCE OF A YOUTH CHARGED WITH MURDER--HE MAKES A SPEECH THAT INFURIATES GENERAL FRY
One of the otten was the Hon Frank Woolford, a ress froo He ithout reservation a typical mountaineer
He practised law in the local courts, and was prominent in the politics of his State His style of oratory bore little resemblance to that of the British House of Lords He had been a soldier in tars, and his dauntless courage and inexhaustible good humor made him the idol of his coh and Ready” that repelled the charge of twenty thousand lancers under Santa Ana at Buena Vista He was as brave as Marshal Ney, and it was said of him that the battle-field was his hole
He promptly espoused the cause of the Union at the outbreak of the Civil War and was chosen Colonel of a athered froht, but of the science of war as taught in the schools he was as ignorant as the grave It was said that his entire tactics were eht,” and ”Scatter” When the first was heard his men ”huddled and fit”; and when retreat was the only possible salvation, the command to ”scatter” was obeyed with equal alacrity Each man was now for himself, and ”devil take the hindle never failed to secure pro into line at the auspicious , even at the time when the recital of the deeds of brave reat ear
Woolford and his troopers were in the thickest of the fight at Mill Spring, where Zollicoffer fell; later, they hung upon the flanks of Bragg on his retreat southward from the bloody field of Perryville
More than once during those troublous tian, Forrest, and the gallant Joe Wheeler of world renown