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Show A CHAPTER OF BETWEENS. 183 and in cloin' that I made the big mistake o' my life. The town was settled by a lot from Botetour, Virginia folks that said ' bin gone done it,' and made their women do the milking ; and then come some caow- paling Yanks from C'neticutt, and Quakers from Pennsylvania, and natives from Indiana, and so they named it Union Flats. It's flat enough now, but as to the Union you'll hear my gentle voice. " Lemme see; there was first Whig and Democrats - just about an even divide, and stiffer'n a liberty pole on both sides; but when it come to ' lectin' a constable, I reckon the fightinest man stood in with the boys, and as for whisky, wh- e- u- w ! It was sod- corn barefooted. The valley- tan these Mormons make ain't nowhere. I^ mind old Mike Gardner drunk a pint of it, and went home and stole one of his own plows and hid it in the woods, and didn't know where it was when he was sober, and had to git drunk agin to find it. " These was only the common fellers. The good folks was awful re-ligious. The Old School Baptisses never went nigh the Methodis' meetin' house, and tothers was jist as stiff on thar side; but there was a sprinkle o' Quakers to soften things, and a little blue spot o' Presby-tarans, but not enough for a meetin' house, bein' there was no more'n six or seven hundred people in the whole place. So they was only two meetin' houses, and three or four groceries for whisky and such, besides Chew's store, which was the only place that sold bour-bon tothers only ' sod- corn.' Then they was Masons and a lot of Batavy New Yorkers that was agin the Masons, and some agin all se-cret societies; and along in 1843 come some Millerites, crazier'n loons about the eend of all things on the llth o' August, and pretty soon after come some Washingtonians and dug in agin Chew and the others that sold whisky, so if a feller wasn't tuck on one side he was on tother. But the boys soon busted them up, and, no matter what the prophecies said, the eend didn't come on the llth, and things was sort o' dull till these new- fangled no-tions come in and the Methodis's they set up a choir. But they was nigh half agin it, and that set up another meetin' at tother eend o' town, and split folks all up agin. DEACON CHEW - Then come this nigger business, for it was only forty miles to the Ohio, and the new meetin' folks got a real cranky little chap from some'eres East for preacher, and took the abolition shoot, and so all the others preached on Onesimus, and Hagur, and ' Cussed be Canaan,' and things got real lively agin. |