Western sentinel. [volume] (Winston [i.e. Winston-Salem], N.C.) 1856-1886, 1885-11-26
TOO MUCH CHIMNEY.
a "REMINISCENCES OF THE LOG
CABIN DAYS.
What My PaternaI Grandfather
Might have Done, Had the Top
Knot of a Certain Edifice Been
Eighteen Inches Lower.

Eighteen Inches Lower.
BY EDWARD PAYsoN HALL.
For the Sentinel.
was not old enough at the time to
know great deal about the log-cabin
excitement of 1910. Yet the single
incident of the Harrison campaign
which my child eyes beheld Is as
plainly before my vision now as if it
had happened yesterday.
My paternal grandfather had built,
and the State had chartered a toll
bridge at his home on the North Yad-
kin River equi-distant just nine. miles
between Mocksville and Salisbury.
That bridge was most emphatically
and Justly too, the old mans pet. He
had established it firmly there, at a
point where all previous structures of
the kind had washed away, by the
naked wealth of mother wit and sheer
force of indomitable pluck. He had
raised and finished it by the home
help and homemade appliances. He
sawed the timbers at his own mill, and
made his own slaves put th EN- in po-
sition. Every day during the period
of it's erection he was prostrate with
sickness; yet he lay on a bed upon
the river bank, propped up with pill
lows, ordering the negroes in the
work and pointing out with his cane
what was to be done. You cannot
wonder then, that when he got about
again and his darling job stood COM
plete, he naturally should call it "my
bridge" and feel as much the king
| of that wooden n-foored part of the
highway as Robinson Crusoe felt him.
self the sovereign of the island he had
single-handedly discovered, settled
and peopled.
He lived on the Davie side and
Mrs. Elizabeth Fraley on the Rowan
or opposite bank of the river, right on
the road to the old river ford, which
was about midway between the bridge
and his grist and saw mills up the
river.
One day while playing about and
gathering hickory-nuts on the river
hills heard the stentorian voice ot
my grandfather at the Rowan gate o.
the bridge firing volleys of indignant
language at the advance guard of ar
army of folks reaching all the way
from the abutment past Mrs. Fraley'i
house and so far back into the piney
woods, I couldn't begin to see its rear
Its head was log-cabin on wheels
drawn by a dozen horses, covered ant
weather-boarded with coon-skins anc
filed with barrels Of hard cider ane
a singing, drinking, fddling and dane
ing crowd of political idiots. A con
densed paraphrase and free transla
ton of the old gentleman's Democrat
ic harangue at the moment would
have run somewhat thusly =
"Go to the ford! Go to the ford
you blankety, blank, blank set O
heathenish Whig Ihrksi That thin.
is no lawful vehicle and neysy sybridg
was never chartered to pass any such
Itswould be disgrace to my bridg
and it shall never pass over thes
timbers while my head is hot p
| While the old war horse thus rage,
and stormed, aye, and would have rat
ified with his blood every word h
said had they attempted to force
passage, old Tippecanoe's marshal lieu
tenant was slyly measuring the heigh
Of the cabin and also that of the en-
trance to the bridge, which wa
rooted over from end to end, whe
the melancholy fact revealed itsel
that the cabin chimney was just eigl
teen inches too high to go under tha
Democratic roof.
/ So off they. drove, back to the ford
gaily singing
"Hooray, hooray for Tip and Tyler;
Old Tippecanoe will burst Vans biler
Mt. Hernon, N. C. .Noy. II.