Excerpts
from books written by David Crockett:
Col. CROCKETT’s Tour
To The North and
Down East
1834
“The EXPERIMENT.”
“When thou dost
read a book,
do not turn the leaves only
but gather the fruit.”
Written by
Himself.
Page 81.
Speech to the people in the city of Boston:
“We only want to do away prejudice,
and give the people information.
I have done my best:
I have sent fourteen thousand documents to Tennessee;
and my colleagues complain that it will raise a dust there;
and I tell them, that it is just what I want.
Page 82.
I hope, gentlemen, you will excuse my plain,
unvarnished ways, which may seem strange to you here.
I never had but six months
schooling in all my life; and I confess,
I consider myself but a poor tyke
to be here
addressing the most intelligent people in the world:
but I think it the duty of every representative of the people,
when he is called upon, to give his opinions;
and I have tried to give you
a little touch of mine.”
Page 83.
When I went home,
there I met a young man that was stone blind.
“Well,” says you,
“that’s no new thing.”
Stop, if you please:
That puts me in mind of an old parson
and a scolding woman that belonged to his church.
She told him, in one of her tantrums,
that she could preach as well as he could,
and he might select her text.
“Well,” said the old man,
“I’ll give you one,
and you can study over it—
‘It is better to dwell
on the house-top,
than in a wide house with a
brawling woman. ’ ”—
“You good-for-nothing,
impudent,
old what shall I say?
do you go for
to call me a
brawling woman? ’ ”—
“Dear mistress,”
said the old man,
“you’ll have to
study a while longer,
for you come to the application of the text
before you discuss the doctrine.”
Now
it was not that I met a blind boy
in Tremont house that was any curiosity:
but it was his errand.
He inquired of the bar-keeper for me,
as I was standing by him, and said
he was sent by the teacher of the blind,
to invite me to visit the institution,
and that he would show me the way!
Page 84.
I was told by the
gentlemen present, that he could go
all over Boston.
A gentleman accompanied me,
and we went on
till we came to a fine house,
where the institution was kept.
We went, and were introduced to the teacher.
He asked me if I wished
to hear some of
them read.
I said I did: and
he ordered a little girl, /
perhaps ten or twelve
years old,
to get her book, asked her to find a certain chapter
in the Old Testament, and read it.
She took up the book, and felt
with her fingers until she found it.
He then told her to read: and she did so,
with a clear, distinct voice.
This was truly astonishing:
But on examining their books,
I found that the letters were stamped
on the under side of the paper,
so as to raise them above the surface of the
upper side; and such was the keenness of their touch,
that by passing the end of the finger
over the word, it served them for sight,
and they pronounced the word.
There was a little boy learning to cipher
in the same way.
The teacher put several questions to him
aloud, and, putting his fingers together
and working with them for a short time,
he answered all the
questions correctly.
Page 85.
That kind of education
astonished me more than anything
I ever saw.
This is the house that I mentioned before
that was given by Colonel Perkins,
to the blind.
There is not such a grand house
owned by any person in Washington.
What a satisfaction it must be
to this old gentleman, and others
who have helped these unfortunates,
to see them surrounded with
so many comforts.
When I returned,
there were some gentlemen that invited me to go to
Cambridge, where the big college
or university is; where they keep
ready-made titles or nicknames to give people.
I would not go, for I did not know but they might
stick an LL. D.
on me before they let me go;
and I had no idea of changing
“Member of the House of Representatives
of the United States,”
for what stands for
“Lazy
Lounging Dunce,”
Page 86.
which I am sure my constituents
would have translated my new title to be,
knowing that I had never taken any degree,
and did not own to any, except a small degree of
good sense not to pass for
what I was not—
I would not go to it.
There had been one doctor
made from Tennessee already, and I had
no wish to put on the cap and bells.
I recollected the story of a would-be-great man
who put on his sign, after his name,
in large capitals,
D.Q.M.G.,
which stood for
Deputy Quarter
Master General;
but which one of his neighbors, to the great diversion
of all the rest, and to his mortification,
translated into
“damn’d quick made gentleman.”
No, indeed, not me
any thing you please but Granny Crockett;
I leave that for others;
I’ll throw that in
to make chuck full the
“measure of their country’s glory.”
I told them I did not go to this branding-school;
I did not want to be tarred with the same stick;
one digniterry was enough
from Tennessee; that as far as my learning went,
I would stand over it, and spell a strive or two
with any of them, from a-b-ab
to crucifix, which was where
I left off
at school.
Page 87.
This day
I dined out again; but I’m most tired
talking of dinners,
especially after I have eaten them.
I went to the theatre that night.
The acting was pretty considerable,
considering that one actress, who,
it was very plain,
was either a married woman, or
“had ought to be,”
as they say there,
was playing the character of a young lady;
and one fellow tried to sing
that was not half up to
a Mississippi boat-horn.
We got a little dry
or so, and wanted a horn,
but this was a temperance house,
and there was nothing to treat a friend to
that was worth shaking a stick at:
so, says I,
“when there was a famine in the land of Canaan,
there was plenty of corn in Egypt:
let us go over to the Tremont;
Boyden keeps stuff that runs friends together
and makes them forget which is which.”
Over we went, and soon forgot
all about the theatre.
THE LIFE
of
MARTIN
VAN BUREN
HEIR-APPARENT
TO THE "GOVERNMENT,"
AND THE
APPOINTED SUCCESSOR OF
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON.
———————————————
BY DAVID CROCKETT
———————————————
PHILADELPHIA
ROBERT WRIGHT
———————————————
1835.
Page 206.
There are
many persons who will call my book
perfect trash; will wonder
how people of sense can read
such nonsense.
Against such I make
no complaint, for
in so doing
I might be guilty of impiety;
for I might possibly arraign the acts of intellects
not altogether answerable for their operations;
and we are admonished by the Scripture
that he who calleth his “brother a fool
is in danger of Hell-fire.”
There are others
who will say that
I never wrote this book; that someone else has done it for me;
that I have not education and sense enough
to put together such a work.
To such, and especially if they be good Jackson men,
I would say, have a caution how you use such expressions,
for I well recollect when it was said,
and believed by a great many
weak folks, to be sure,
that General Jackson
did not write his own messages.
And the way it was discovered
that he did actually write his own messages
is very curious indeed, and goes to show
how guarded people ought to be
in ascribing
an author’s writings to other pens.
Page 207.
It was this: when the president
wrote his famous proclamation—
a paper of
his usual brilliancy
of composition,
rather exceeding his former productions,
in consequence of the nature of the subject—
some said it was written by Livingston; others,
by Lewis McLean;
but Tom Ritchie,
who finds out every thing,
published in his
Truth-Teller,
“that he had seen
a man who saw
a man in Washington city,
that told him he had seen
another man who said
he saw the notes
of the proclamation
in the president’s
own handwriting.”
This was proof conclusive;
so that
when the president wrote
that long and able exposition
of the constitutional powers
of the federal government, accompanying his message
recommending the force bill, in which
he displayed so much
deep legal learning,
such extensive research,
frequently using
such expressions as this,
“I find
by such authorities,”
“I draw
my deductions,”
“I am
of opinion,”
“I come
to this conclusion,”—
no one has ever doubted since,
upon his own authority as above shown,
confirmed by Ritchie’s
point blank proof,
that he is the author of every great state paper
that bears his name.
Now why may I not be the author
of my own works?
I use the word
“I,” as well as
General Jackson.
Page 208.
No, no, people must not think that
because Me and General Jackson had no education
and come from nothing, we can’t write.
The very fact that we have risen in the world
from such an unpromising beginning, shows
we have strong minds; and it only requires
a little mixing with scholars to get a sharp notion
of putting one’s ideas upon paper.
Be this as it may, all I ask is, not to regard the author
or his language: the only real question for the reader is,
Are the author’s facts true?
If they are false,
he and they ought to be condemned;
but if they are true,
he and they ought to have their proper influence,
though they should spring from the brain and pen
of the most illiterate man in all the world.
I repeat, the candour and the conscience of the reader
is all I ask.
It is usual
to sum up the character
whose life is written, by a short description
of his mind and person.
As a substitute for this last duty of an author,
I beg leave to conclude my memoir
with the following extract from an elegant writer:
“Always suspect a man
who affects great softness of manner,
an unruffled evenness of temper,
and an enunciation
studied and slow.
These things are unnatural, and speak a degree of mental discipline
into which he that has no purpose of craft
or design to answer cannot submit to drill himself.
The most successful knaves are usually of this description,
as smooth as razors dipt in oil, and as sharp.
They affect the softness of the dove,
which they have not, in order
to hide the cunning
of the serpent, which they have.”
THE END
“Not Yours To Give!”
David Crockett’s first rifle:
“Old Betsy”
is on display:
McCLUNG
Collection, East Tennessee
Historical Society.
Martin
Van BUREN:
The American Gladstone.
Origins of the Electoral College
The Independent Treasury.
TaxJudas.com
ScoolDaze.com
John R. NEAL
set the stage for the Scopes Trial:
“Slaughter
of Ph. D.'s.”
Scopes
Trial.
The
Butler Act,
Trial,
ReTrial Petition,
Mises: The Last Knight of
Liberalism.
The First
Acadamic Farmer.
Friday,
4 May, 2007
Mike Huckabee said:
He “can accept that
others believe that
they and their families
come from apes.”
For Bottom Fishers — Switch and
Bait at VINBOB’s Bait Shop !
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