My husband, an ex-army officer, had resigned the sword for the
saw-mill. Our house was the oldest in the village, which does not speak
much for its antiquity, as five years before Maysville had been unbroken
forest. The house stood outside the cluster of houses that formed the
little settlement: it was a quarter of a mile to our nearest neighbor.
Now, Maysville calls itself a city, has an academy and a college, and a
great quantity of church in proportion to its population. Then, we "went
to meeting" in a little white-painted, pine box of a thing, like a barn
that had risen in life. The stumps stood about the street: the cows
wandered at will and pastured in the "public square," an irregular
clearing running out into indefinite space. Here also the Indians would
encamp when they came to town from their reservation about five miles
away, and here also, I regret to say, they would sometimes get drunk, and
add what Martha Penney calls "a revolving animosity to the scenery." The
squaws, however, would generally secure the knives and guns before the
quarrelsome stage was reached. Not unfrequently the ladies would bring the
weapons to Mrs. Moore or myself to hide away till their lords and masters
should be sober. Then, feeling secure that no great harm could happen,
they would look on with the utmost placidity at the antics of their better
halves until they dropped down to sleep off their liquor.
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