THOSE OLD LUNES! OR, WHICH IS THE MADMAN? BY WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS (1806-1870) "I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw." - Hamlet. WE I TE had spent a merry night of it. Our stars had paled their not ineffectual fires, only in the daylight; and while Dan Phoebus was yet rising, "jocund on the misty mountain's top," I was busy in adjusting my foot in the stirrup and mounting my good steed Priam, to find my way by a close cut, and through narrow Indian trails, to my lodgings in the little town of C-, on the very borders of Mississippi. There were a dozen of us, all merry larks, half mad with wine and laughter, and the ride of seven miles proved a short one. In less than two hours I was snugly snoozing in my own sheets, and dreaming of the twin daughters of old Hansford Owens. Well might one dream of such precious damsels. Verily they seemed, all of a sudden, to have become a part of my existence. They filled my thoughts, excited my imagination, and if it be not an impertinence to say anything of the heart of a roving lad of eighteen then they were at the very bottom of mine. Both of them, let me say for they were twins, and were endowed with equal rights by nature. I was not yet prepared to say what was the difference, if any, between their claims. One was fair, the other brown; one pensive, the other merry as the cricket of Venus. Susannah was meek as became an elder's daughter; Emmeline so mischievous that she might well have worried the meekest of the saints in the calendar from his propriety and position. I confess, though I thought constantly of Susannah, I always looked after Emmeline the first. She was the brunette one of your flashing, sparkling, effervescing beauties -perpetually running over with exultation - brimful of passionate fancies that tripped, on tiptoe, half winged, through her thoughts. She was a creature to make your blood bound in your bosom to take you entirely off your feet, and fancy, for the moment, that your heels are quite as much entitled to dominion as your head. Lovely too brilliant, if not absolutely perfect in features she kept you always in a sort of sunlight. She sung well, talked well, danced well was always in air seemed never herself to lack repose, and, it must be confessed, seldom suffered it to anybody else. Her dancing was the crowning grace and glory. She was no Taglioni not an Ellsler - I do not pretend that. But she was a born artiste. Every From The Southern and Western Monthly Magazine and Review (Charleston, S. C.), February 1845. Republished in the first series (1845) of the volume, The Wigwam and the Cabin (1845-1845), by William Gilmore Simms. motion was a study. Every look was life. Her form subsided into the sweetest luxuriance of attitude, and rose into motion with some such exquisite buoyancy as would become Venus issuing from the foam. Her very affectations were so naturally worn that you at length looked for them as essential to her charm. I confess but no! Why should I do anything so foolish? Susannah was a very different creature. She was a fair girl —- rather pale, perhaps, when her features were in repose. She had rich soft flaxen hair and dark blue eyes. She looked rather than spoke. Her words were few, her glances many. She was not necessarily silent in silence. On the contrary, her very silence had frequently a significance, taken with her looks, that needed no help from speech. She seemed to look through you at a glance, yet there was a liquid sweetness in her gaze that disarmed it of all annoyance. If Emmeline was the glory of the sunlight, Susannah was the sovereign of the shade. If the song of the one filled you with exultation, that of the other awakened all your tenderness. If Emmeline was the creature for the dance, Susannah was the wooing, beguiling Egeria, who could snatch you from yourself in the moments of respite and repose. For my part, I felt that I could spend all my mornings with the former, and all my evenings with the latter. Susannah with her large, blue, tearful eyes, and few, murmuring and always gentle accents, shone out upon me at nightfall, as that last star that watches in the vault of night for the coming of the sapphire dawn. So much for the damsels. And all these fancies, not to say feelings, were the fruit of but three short days' acquaintance with their objects. But these were days when thoughts traveled merrily and fast - when all that concerns the fancies and the affections are caught up in a moment, as if the mind were nothing but a congeries of instincts, and the sensibilities. with a thousand delicate antennæ, were ever on the grasp for prey. Squire Owens was a planter of tolerable condition. He was a widower, with these two lovely and lovable daughters - no more. But, bless you! Mine was no calculating heart. Very far from it. Neither the wealth of the father, nor the beauty of the girls, had yet prompted me to think of marriage. Life was pleasant enough as it was. Why burden it? Let well enough alone, say I. I had no wish to be happier. A wife never entered my thoughts. What might have come of being often with such damsels, there's no telling; but just then, it was quite enough to dance with Emmeline, and muse with Susannah, and vive la bagatelle! I need say nothing more of my dreams, since the reader sufficiently knows the subject. I slept late that day, and only rose in time for dinner, which, in that almost primitive region, took place at 12 o'clock, M. no appetite. A herring and soda water might have sufficed, but these were matters foreign to the manor. I endured the day and headache together, as well as I could, slept soundly that night, with now the most ravishing fancies of Emmeline, and now the pleasantest dreams of Susannah, one or other of whom still usurped the place of a bright particular star in my most capacious fancy. Truth is, in those heyday days, my innocent heart never saw any terrors in polygamy. I rose a new man, refreshed and very eager for a start. I barely swallowed breakfast when Priam was at the door. While I was about to mount, with thoughts filled with the meek beauties of Susannah, I was arrested by the approach of no less a person than Ephraim Strong, the village blacksmith. "You're guine to ride, I see." "Yes." "To Squire Owens, I reckon." "Right." "Well, keep a sharp lookout on the road, for there's news come down that the famous Archy Dargan has broke Hamilton gaol." "And who's Archy Dargan?" "What! Don't know Archy? Why, he's the madman that's been shut up there, it's now guine on two years." "A madman, eh?" "Yes, and a mighty sevagerous one at that. He's the cunningest white man going. Talks like a book, and knows how to get out of a scrape is jest as sensible as any man for a time, but, sudden, he takes a start, like a shying horse, and before you knows where you are, his heels are in your jaw. Once he blazes out, it's knife or gun, hatchet or hickory-anything he can lay hands on. He's kill'd two men already, and cut another's throat a'most to killing. He's an ugly chap to meet on the road, so look out right and left." "What sort of man is he?" "In looks?" "Yes!" "Well, I reckon, he's about your heft. He's young and tallish, with a fair skin, brown hair, and a mighty quick keen blue eye, that never looks steddily nowhere. Look sharp for him. The sheriff with his 'spose-youcome-and-take-us' is out after him, but he's mighty cute to dodge, and had the start some twelve hours afore they missed him." II After the momen The information thus received did not disquiet me. tary reflection that it might be awkward to meet a madman, out of bounds, upon the highway, I quickly dismissed the matter from my mind. I had no room for any but pleasant meditations. The fair Susannah was now uppermost in my dreaming fancies, and, reversing the grasp upon my whip, the ivory handle of which, lined with an ounce or two of lead, seemed to me a sufficiently effective weapon for the worst of dangers, I bade my friendly blacksmith farewell, and dashed forward upon the highroad. A smart canter soon took me out of the settlement, and, once in the woods, I recommended myself, with all the happy facility of youth, to its most pleasant and beguiling imaginings. I suppose I had ridden a mile or more - the story of the bedlamite was gone utterly from my thought — when a sudden turn in the road showed me a person, also mounted, and coming towards me at an easy trot, some twenty-five or thirty yards distant. There was nothing remarkable in his appearance. He was a plain farmer or woodman, clothed in simple homespun, and riding a short heavy chunk of an animal, that had just been taken from the plow. The rider was a spare, long-legged person, probably thirty years or thereabouts. He looked innocent enough, wearing that simple, open-mouthed sort of countenance, the owner of which, we assume, at a glance, will never set any neighboring stream on fire. He belonged evidently to a class as humble as he was simple but I had been brought up in a school which taught me that the claims of poverty were quite as urgent upon courtesy as those of wealth. Accordingly, as we neared each other, I prepared to bestow upon him the usual civil recognition of the highway. What is it Scott says I am not sure that I quote him rightly: When men in distant forests meet And, with the best of good humor, I rounded my lips into a smile, and got ready my salutation. To account somewhat for its effect when uttered, I must premise that my own personal appearance at this time was rather wild and impressive. My face was full of laughter and my manners of buoyancy. My hair was very long, and fell in masses upon my shoulder, unrestrained by the cap which I habitually wore, and which, as I was riding under heavy shade trees, was grasped in my hand along with my riding whip. As the stranger drew nigh, the arm was extended, cap and whip lifted in air, and with free, generous lungs, I shouted 'good morning, my friend - how wags the world with you to-day?" The effect of this address was prodigious. The fellow gave no answer not a word, not a syllable - not the slightest nod of the head — mais, tout au contraire. But for the dilating of his amazed pupils, and the dropping of the lower jaw, his features might have been chiseled out of stone. They wore an expression amounting to consternation, and I could see that he caught up his bridle with increased alertness, bent himself to the saddle, half drew up his horse, and then, as if suddenly resolved, edged him off, as closely as the woods would allow, to the opposite side of the road. The undergrowth was too thick to allow of his going into the wood at the spot where we encountered, or he certainly would have done so. Somewhat surprised at this, I said something, I cannot now recollect what, the effect of which was even more impressive upon him than my former speech. The heads of our horses were now nearly parallel the road was an ordinary wagon track, say twelve feet wide I could have brushed him with my cap as we passed, and, waving it still aloft, he seemed to fancy that such was my intention for, inclining his whole body on the off side of his nag, as the Comanche does when his aim is to send an arrow at his enemy beneath his neck his heels thrown back, though spurless, were made to belabor with the most surprising rapidity the flanks of his drowsy animal. And, not without some effect. The creature dashed first into a trot, then into a canter, and finally into a gallop, which, as I was bound one way and he the other, soon threw a considerable space between us. "The fellow's mad!" was my reflection and speech, as, wheeling my horse half about, I could see him looking backward, and driving his heels into the sides of his reluctant hack. The next moment gave me a solution of the matter. The simple countryman had heard of the bedlamite from Hamilton jail. My bare head, the long hair flying in the wind, my buoyancy of manner, and the hearty and perhaps novel form of salutation with which I addressed him had satisfied him that I was the person. As the thought struck me, I resolved to play the game out, and, with a restless love of levity which has been too frequently my error, I put the whip over my horse's neck, and sent him forward in pursuit. My nag was a fine one, and very soon the space was lessened between me and the chase. As he heard the footfalls behind, the frightened fugitive redoubled his exertions. He laid himself to it, his heels paddling in the sides of his donkey with redoubled industry. And thus I kept him for a good mile, until the first houses of the settlement grew visible in the distance. I then once more turned upon the path to the Owens', laughing merrily at the rare chase, and the undisguised consternation of the countryman. The story afforded ample merriment to my fair friends Emmeline and Susannah. "It was so ridiculous that one of my appearance should be taken for a madman. The silly fellow deserved the scare." On these points we were all perfectly agreed. That night we spent charmingly. The company did not separate till near one o'clock. We had fun and fiddles. I danced by turns with the twins, and more than once with a Miss Gridley, a very pretty girl, who was present. Squire Owens was in the best of humors, and, no ways loath, I was made to stay all night. III A new day of delight dawned upon us with the next. Our breakfast made a happy family picture, which I began to think it would be cruel to interrupt. So snugly did I sit beside Emmeline, and so sweetly did Susannah minister at the coffee urn, and so patriarchally did the old man look around upon the circle, that my meditations were all in favor of certain measures for perpetuating the scene. The chief difficulty seemed to be in the way of a choice between the sisters. How happy could one be with either I turned now from one to the other, only to become more bewildered. The lively glance and playful remark of Emmeline, her love-smiling visage, unpremeditative air, were triumphant always while I beheld them; but the pensive, earnest look of Susannah, the mellow cadences of her tones, seemed always to sink into my soul, and were certainly remembered longest. Present, Emmeline was irresistible; absent, I thought chiefly of Susannah. Breakfast was fairly over before I came to a decision. We adjourned to the parlor and there, with Emmeline at the piano, and Susannah with her Coleridge in hand-her favorite poet -I was quite as much distracted as before. The bravura of the one swept me completely off my feet. And when I pleaded with the other to read me the touching poem of Genevieve, her low, subdued and exquisitely modulated utterance, so touching, so true to the plaintive and seductive sentiment, so harmonious even when |