The Cars Were Filled With
Lusty Yeomen, All Gabbling Politics.
There was an overwhelming
majority for Fremont.
Under such circumstances it was a virtue for a
Buchanan man to show his colors. There was a solid old Virginian
aboard; and his open and intelligent countenance peculiar, it seems
to me, to Virginia denoted that he was a good-hearted man. I was
glad to see him defend his side of politics with so much zeal against
the Fremonters. He argued against half a dozen of them with great
spirit and sense. In spite of the fervor of his opponents, however,
they treated him with proper respect and kindness. It was between
eleven and twelve when I arrived at Zanesville. I hastened to the
Stacy House with my friend, J. E B. (a young gentleman on his way to
Iowa, whose acquaintance I regard it as good luck to have made). The
Stacy House could give us lodgings, but not a mouthful of
refreshments. As the next best thing, we descended to a restaurant,
which seemed to be in a very drowsy condition, where we soon got some
oyster and broiled chicken, not however without paying for it an
exorbitant price. I rather think, however, I shall go to the Stacy
House again when next I visit Zanesville, for, on the whole, I have no
fault to find with it. Starting at eight the next morning, we were
four hours making the distance (59 miles) from Zanesville to Columbus.
The road passes through a country of unsurpassed loveliness. Harvest
fields, the most luxuriant, were everywhere in view. At nearly every
stopping-place the boys besieged us with delicious apples and grapes,
too tempting to be resisted. We had an hour to spend at Columbus,
which, after booking our names at the Neil House for dinner and
which is a capital house we partly spent in a walk about the city.
It is the capital of the state, delightfully situated on the Scioto
river, and has a population in the neighborhood of 20,000. The new
Capitol there is being built on a scale of great magnificence. Though
the heat beat down intensely, and the streets were dusty, we were
"bent on seeing the town." We my friend B. and myself had walked
nearly half a mile down one of the fashionable streets for dwellings,
when we came to a line which was drawn across the sidewalk in front of
a residence, which, from the appearance, might have belonged to one of
the upper-ten. The line was in charge of two or three little girls,
the eldest of whom was not over twelve. She was a bright-eyed little
miss, and had in her face a good share of that metal which the vulgar
think is indispensable to young lawyers. We came to a gradual pause at
sight of this novel obstruction. "Buchanan, Fillmore, or Fremont?"
said she, in a tone of dogmatical interrogatory. B. was a fervid
Fremonter he probably thought she was so he exclaimed, "Vermont
for ever!" I awaited the sequel in silence.
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