Part 1 (1/2)

Marse Henry, Complete

by Henry Watterson

Chapter the First

I Ain to Take Notice--John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson--James K Polk and Franklin Pierce--Jack Dade and ”Beau Hickton

I

I araphic odds and ends from such data of record andof a student of life; an observer of men and women and affairs; an appraiser of their character, their conduct, and, on occasion, of their rew to a habit, has led me into many and diverse companies, the lowest not always the meanest

Circumstance has rather favored than hindered this bent I was born in a party carew to h stirring times and in the thick of events In a vein colloquial and reminiscential, not ambitious, let me recall some i ago reached and turned the corner of the Scriptural li fourscore, does not yet feel painfully the frost of age beneath the ravage of ti waves assuredly they have not obliterated his sense either of vision or vista Mindful of the adjuration of Burns,

Keep so to yourself, Ye scarcely tell to ony,

I shall yet hold little in reserve, having no state secrets or mysteries of the soul to reveal

It is not my purpose to be or to seem oracular I shall not write after the manner of Rousseau, whose Confessions had been better honored in the breach than the observance, and in any event whose sincerity will bear question; nor have I tales to tell after the manner of Paul Barras, whose Memoirs have earned hirandiose volubility and self-co of Metternich and Talleyrand, whose pretentious volumes rest for the most part unopened upon dusty shelves I aspire to none of the honors of the historian It shall be arrulity of the raconteur and to restrain the exaggerations of the ego But neither fear of the charge of self-exploitation nor the specter of a modesty oft too obtrusive to be real shall deter h in the main but a humble chronicler, I must needs appear upon the scene and speak of myself; for I at least have not always been a dummy and have sometimes in a way helped to make history

In my early life--as it were,what old Simon Cameron called ”one of those damned literary fellows” and Thomas Carlyle less profanely described as ”a leeterary celeebrity”

But soard It was easy to become The National Gambler in Nast's cartoons, and yet easier The National Drunkard through themint-julep joke; but the phanto brow

Though I wrote verses for the early issues of Harper's Weekly--happily no one can now prove them on me, for even at that jejune period I had the prudence to use an anonym--the Harpers, luckily for me, declined to publish a volureat American novel” It was actually accepted by my ever too partial friend, Alexander Macmillan But, rest his dear old soul, he died and his successors refused to see the transcendentsense of belles-lettres values subsequently cae Harvey arrived at the front I ”'ad 'opes” But, Lord, that cast-iron man had never any bookish bowels of compassion--or political either for the ned i-comedians of literature, who inevitably drift into journalisreat man of letters quite thwarted, I became a newspaper reporter--a voluain an editor and e, I hit the Kentucky trail and set up for a journalist I did this, however, with a big ”J,” nursing for a while some faint ambitions of states that ht obstruct ent, or, as I have sometiger and not a slave nigger”

II

Though born in a party carown to manhood on a political battlefield ious spirit of the titon and the two family homesteads in Tennessee, which had cradled respectively my father andHill in Maury County Both randfathers were devout churchmen of the Presbyterian faith My Grandfather Black, indeed, was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, who lived, preached and died in Madison County, Kentucky He was descended, I aht line froh, who, as Burkle tells us, having declared in a serland was a harlot, and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, little better, went to prison for it--all honor to his memory

My Grandfather Watterson was a man of mark in his day He was decidedly a constructive--the projector and in part the builder of an important railway line--an early friend and comrade of General Jackson, as all too busy to take office, and, indeed, who throughout his life disdained the epherated directly froinia to Tennessee

The two families were prosperous, even wealthy for those days, and my father had entered public life with plenty of money, and General Jackson for his sponsor It was not, however, his ambitions or his career that interested me--that is, not until I ell into s and the revivalist preachers delivering the Word of God with norant yet often of very eloquent and convincing fervor

The wave of the great Awakening of 1800 had not yet subsided Bascom was still alive I have heard hihts of heaven and hell, of the i, of the Redeeround witnessed an annual ious hysteria lasting ten days or teeks The sers were the outpourings of the soul in ecstacy There was no fanaticis, proscriptive sort; nor any conscious cant; simplicity, childlike belief in future rewards and punishood deal of doughty controversy between the churches, as between the parties; but love of the Union and the Lord was the bedrock of every confession

Inevitably an ihts and sounds as it eed from infancy must have been deeply affected

Until I elve years old the enchant With the loudest, I could sing all the hyan to transpose them into many sorts of rhythmic movement for the edification of my companions Their words, aiotten, into h not without a break of voice--while toowhich a life of activity in very different walks and ways and a certain self-control I have been always able to command would scarcely suffice to restrain