PEN PICTURES
Of Eventful Scenes and Struggles of Life
By B. F. Craig
Kansas City, Missouri
1880
Original
Original
CONTENTS
SCENE SECOND.—THE HERO OF SHIRT-TAIL BEND.
SCENE THIRD—THE SEPARATED SISTERS.
SCENE FOURTH—ROXIE DAYMON AND ROSE SIMON.
SCENE FIFTH.—THE BELLE OF PORT WILLIAM.
SCENE SIXTH.—THE SECOND GENERATION.
SCENE SEVENTH—WAR BETWEEN THE STATES.
SCENE FIRST—INTRODUCTION.
It is fashionable to preface what we have to say.
Some men build a large portico in front of the edifice they erect.
This may attract the eye of a stranger, but no real comfort can be realized until we enter the house.
And then no display of fine furniture or studied form of manners can equal a whole-soul, hearty welcome.
Besides, no long proclamation of the entertainment can equal in interest the entertainment itself.
Without further preliminary ceremony, I will introduce you to the sad experience of a living man:—
Born in the house of respectable parents, on the southern bank of the beautiful Ohio, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, and educated in a log school house, the first scenes of my manhood were upon the waters of the great Mississippi river and its tributaries. Leaving home at an early age, no hopeful boy was ever turned loose in the wide world more ignorant of the traps and pit-falls set to catch and degrade the youth of this broad and beautiful land.
At Vicksburg, Natchez, Under-the-Hill, and the Crescent City, with armies of dissipation—like the Roman Cæsar—I came, I saw, I conquered.
I had been taught from my earliest infancy that a thief was a scape-goat—on the left-hand side of the left gate, where all the goats are to be crowded on the last day. And that saved me.
For I soon discovered that the gambler and the thief acted upon the same theory.
Having no desire to live through the scenes of my life again—I am not writing my own history, but the