"The Arkansas Traveller:" Southwest Humor on Canvas

"The Arkansas Traveller:" Southwest Humor on CanvasAuthor(s): Sarah BrownSource: The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 348-375Published by: Arkansas Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40025957 .

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The Arkansas Traveller:

Southwest Humor on Canvas

By SARAH BROWN* American Studies Program, George Washington University

Washington, D. C. 20052

JL/uRiNG the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the Arkansas Traveller, in tale, fiddle tune, lyrical song, and pictorial image, was a widespread piece of popular culture. The pictorial image of traveller on horseback and fiddling squatter be- fore a log cabin was created by Edward Payson Washbourne in his painting (ca. 1855). It was based on the humorous tale of travel and encounter related by Colonel Sandf ord Faulkner. Using realistic but passing scenes of the Arkansas frontier, Washbourne created what in 1860 the Little Rock True Democrat called "a truly southern picture by a southern artist."1 As the tale, tune, and song spread throughout the nation during the second half of the nineteenth century, so did the pictorial image. It was represented not only on the cover of songbooks and sheet music, but also in two engravings, one produced in 1859 by Leopold Grozelier, the other by Currier and Ives in 1870. In popular interpretation, the traveller was a "civilized" easterner who had the great misfortune of travelling among the backward inhabitants of Arkansas. By the turn of the cen-

tury, Arkansans sensitive to this interpretation, blamed the image for

doing "untold injury to the good name of the state and her people."2 As the image spread beyond the region its interpretation changed. The

*The author is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at George Washington Univer-

sity, Washington, D. C, and a past member of the Board of Directors of the Arkansas Historical Association.

1 "Death of Edward Payson Washbourne," Little Rock (Ark.) True Democrat, March

31, 1860. 2 William F. Pope, Early Days in Arkansas: Being for the most part the Personal Recol-

lections of an Old Settler (Little Rock, 1895), 231.



SOUTHWEST HUMOR ON CANVAS 349

image was one no longer of region viewing itself through an expression of Southwest humor, but one of nation viewing region.

The Arkansas Traveller tale is said to have originated from an incident which occurred during the Arkansas gubernatorial race of 1840. United States Senator Ambrose H. Sevier, Little Rock founder Chester Ashley, Territorial Governor William S. Fulton, soon-to-be Governor Archibald Yell, and planter-politician Colonel Sandford Faulkner were on a campaign tour in western Arkansas. While in the Boston Mountains (a range within the Ozark Plateau), the party became lost. Upon ap- proaching a squatter's cabin Colonel Faulkner, acting as spokesman, asked for directions. A witty dialogue ensued between Faulkner and the

squatter, much to the amusement of the travelling party. Later, at the inaugural ball in Little Rock, Colonel Faulkner was asked to relate the incident.3

Faulkner retold the event in the form of a dialogue. (For complete dialogue see Appendix.) He was traveller and narrator contrasting his manner and speech with that of the squatter who spoke in dialect. Humor is derived from the juxtaposition of characters and from the use of puns:

Traveller: Have you any spirits here ?

Squatter: Lots uv 'em; Sal seen one last night by that ar ole hollar

gum, and it nearly skeered her to death. Traveller: You mistake my meaning; have you any liquor? Squatter: Had some yesterday, but Ole Bose he got in an lapped

all uv it out'n the pot. Traveller: You don't understand; I don't mean pot liquor. I'm

wet and cold and want some whiskey. Have you got any ?

Squatter: Oh, yes - I drunk the last this mornin'.

The traveller and the squatter both know that the traveller is at a

disadvantage as the squatter holds information which the traveller seeks. In this situation the traveller is made the butt of the squatter's jokes through an affected naivete. How then was the traveller to win the

squatter's confidence and receive the desired information? A well-

8B. S. Alford, "The Arkansas Traveler, arranged and corrected by S. C. Faulkner" broadside (Little Rock, 1876).



350 ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

known fiddler, Faulkner accompanied the dialogue with a reel. During the exchange between the traveller and the squatter, the squatter re-

peatedly plays the beginning of a tune in a frustrated effort to remember its ending. When the traveller takes the fiddle and completes the tune* the squatter invites him into his home and gives him food and drink and the directions necessary for continuing his journey.

The juxtaposition of two accentuated characters with differing socio- economic backgrounds is typical of the literary genre of Southwest humor. To retain balance and humanity on the southern frontier where life was hard, writers of the region created humor which was based upon social contrast made evident in the development of character and dialect.4 The Old Southwest, as the youngest and most undisciplined region of the country, became keenly self-conscious as southern institutions came under fire in the 1830s and 1840s. Writers of the region sought to

preserve its customs and scenes in literature. These writers were, in a sense, among the strongest of the local colorists. But in their effort to

capture a sense of place, they sometimes created characters and scenes which were exaggerated to the point of distortion. Their literature often seemed surreal.5

The best examples of Southwest humor, such as Thomas Bangs Thorpe's "The Big Bear of Arkansas," reflect the stress of changes in a

rapidly evolving region.6 Most American literature is regional, but that which rises beyond the categorization of local color, is created at a point of regional crisis capturing basic human concerns with regard to change - political, economic, and social. The complexities of life on the southern frontier produced a regional literature, the appeal of which extended to the nation.

The major vehicle disseminating Southwest humor to the wider audience was New York's Spirit of the Times. The magazine's editor, Wil- liam J. Porter, sought not professional writers, but gentlemen who

4Hennig Cohen and William B. Dillingham, eds., Humor of the Old Southwest (Boston, 1964), xxii-xxiii.

5 Ibid., xxii; Marcus Cunliffe, The Literature of the United States (4th ed., New York, 1986), 193.

6 For a discussion of Thomas B. Thorpe's "Big Bear of Arkansas" see Kenneth S. Lynn, Mar\ Twain and Southwestern Humor (Boston, 1959), 92-99.




wrote.7 The first major and most prolific of the magazine's contributors, creating such characters as "N. of Arkansas," "Pete Whetstone," and "Jim Cole," was Charles Fenton Mercer ("Fent") Noland of Batesville, Arkansas.8 N. was a gentleman who gave detached accounts of sporting events in the Old Southwest. Pete Whetstone, neither effete nor brutish, was a healthy product of the region. As N.'s constant companion, Pete was neither disliked nor distrusted. While Pete rarely instigated the

rowdy disturbances to which both he and N. were often witness, Pete found humor where N., from his gentlemanly position, could not. Jim Cole was the last of Noland's characters. Illiterate and brutish, he is the exact opposite of N. and reflects Noland's growing sense of Whiggish distrust for the rising Jacksonian populace.9

Noland was typical not only of the Southwest humorist but also of the Arkansas gentleman.10 Born in Virginia, Noland was a soldier, lawyer, journalist, legislator, horse breeder, cotton planter, and land

speculator.11 In genteel society, a more polished gentleman never moved on the earth. To see him in the libraries of the learned ... or in the saloon [sic] with the ladies, one would swear that he had studied all his life nothing but the science of refined courtesy, and the art of saying the most beautiful things. . . . But this view presents only one half of the man. Observe him in a circle of Desperadoes - listen to the roars aroused by his wild anecdotes; . . . see him

practicing at ten paces, driving out the centre every shot, or bringing down the sparrow on the wing; - and you would reverse your

7 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), 334. For a discussion on Porter, the Spirit, and C. F. M. Noland's contributions to the Spirit see Norris W. Yates, William T. Porter and the Spirit of the Times: A Study of the Big Bear School of Humor (Baton Rouge, 1957).

8 Lome Fienberg, "Colonel Noland of the Spirit: The Voices of a Gentleman in South- west Humor," American Literature, LIII (1981), 232. There are two collections of the works of C. F. M. Noland: Leonard Williams, ed., Cavorting on the Devil* s For\: The Pete Whetstone Letters of C. F. M. Noland (Memphis, 1979), and Ted R. Worley and Eugene A. Nolte, eds., Pete Whetstone of Devil's For\ (Van Buren, Ark., 1957).

9 Fienberg, ''Colonel Noland of the Spirit," 235-244. 10 Lynn, Mar\ Twain and Southwest Humor, 52. 11 Cohen and Dillingham, Humor of the Old Southwest, 108.




former judgment of the man. . . . Such is the versatility of his

genius, that he seems equally adapted to every species of effort, intellectual or physical. . . .12

Noland, like his characters, was the product of a time and a place. Colonel Faulkner, who undoubtedly travelled in some of the same circles as Noland, was shaped no less than Noland by the same mold. Faulkner, born in Kentucky, was a soldier, cotton planter, and politician. He was a man of wealth who loved to hunt, fish, and wander through the woods. When he returned from his wanderings, Faulkner would "visit the

public gathering places [in Little Rock] . . . play his favorite game of

billiards, . . . imbibe freely at the bars, and entertain the admiring crowds with hilarious accounts of his adventures."13 Southwest humor is a regional literature, the product of a time and a place. Instead of

putting his humor to pen, Faulkner told tall tales. His most celebrated tale is the Arkansas Traveller.

Faulkner got a hearty reception with the Arkansas Traveller at the

inaugural ball of 1840 and thereafter gave the rendition at parties and other social gatherings until his death in 1874.14 He is said to have done so not only at his daughter's wedding,15 but also at a New Orleans ban-

quet at the request of Louisiana's governor.16 By mid-century, the Arkansas Traveller, in tune, song, and dialogue, had spread throughout the Old Southwest and the Ohio River Valley.17 Like most popular tales, the Arkansas Traveller appeared in variant forms.18 The setting, and

12 Alfred W. Arrington [Charles Summerfield], The Lives and Adventures of the Desperadoes of the South-West, Containing an Account of the Duelists and Dueling together with the lives of Several of the Most Notorious Regulators and Moderators of that Region (New York, 1849) , 73-74.

13 Margaret Smith Ross, "Sandford C. Faulkner," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XIV (Winter 1955), 303.

14 Pope, Early Days in Arkansas, 233. 15 Ross, "Sandford C. Faulkner," 307. 16Alford, 'The Arkansas Traveler" broadside. 17 Thomas Wilson, "The Arkansas Traveller," Ohio Archaeological and Historical

Society Publications, VIII ( 1900) , 303. 18 For variations of the Arkansas Traveller tale and song see Benjamin A. Botkin, ed.,

A Treasury of Southern Folklore: Stories, Ballads, Traditions, and Folkways of the People of the South (New York, 1949) ; and John Harrington Cox, Folksongs of the South (Bos- ton, 1925).




references to travel and fiddling, however, remained the same. Within this framework, the Arkansas Traveller became a vehicle for improvisa- tional humor. During the last half of the nineteenth century, it was a

popular attraction at side shows, circuses, and taverns. It tended to be

ignored by the elite but, as Henry C. Mercer states, "the people loved it."19

As the popularity of the Arkansas Traveller fiddle tune grew, it began to appear in print. The first publication of the tune appeared in 1847, in an arrangement by William Cumming. Called "The Arkansas Traveller and Rackinsack Waltz," it was released simultaneously by Peters and Webster of Louisville and Peters and Field of Cincinnati.20 Numerous

arrangements have been published since, including a full orchestration

by G. Schirmer, Inc. of New York in the early 1930s.21 The first printing of the dialogue with the tune was a sheet version by

Mose Case in 1862 or 1863.22 Case, a popular composer and arranger, later published the same version in his War Songster. It was not through this song book that the Case version became familiar to the greatest audience, but through another published by Dick and Fitzgerald of New York in 1864.23 Used as the title song in this Arkansas Traveler's Song Boo\, the "celebrated story" consumes the first five pages. Dick and Fitz-

gerald published many "New and Popular Comic and Sentimental"

song books which for a dime were "mailed to any address in the U. S. free of postage."24

A testament to the popularity of the Arkansas Traveller was its use as an attraction device in one of the most popular plays in the late nineteenth century. In 1866, Edward Spencer of Baltimore wrote a realistic drama called Down on the Mississippl. It told the story of the destruction of a family by an intruder. The hero, Jefferson, is set adrift after a

19 H. C. Mercer, "On the Track of The Arkansas Traveller'," Century Magazine, V

(1896), 707. 20 Mary D. Hudgins, "Arkansas Traveler - a Multi-Parented Wayfarer," Arkansas

Historical Quarterly, XXX (Summer 1971), 150. 21 Ibid., 159. 22 James R. Masterson, Tall Tales of Ar\ansaw (Boston, 1942), 189. 23 Ibid., 191. 24 Dick and Fitzgerald, Arkansas Traveler's Song Boo\ (New York, 1864).




stranger seduces his wife and kidnaps his daughter. After years of wan-

dering, Jefferson is reunited with his daughter and defeats the villain. The play was written for F. S. Chaufrau, then one of America's most

celebrated actors. In accordance with an agreement, Chaufrau's agent, Thomas B. de Walden, was named joint author. De Walden, ever aware of the popular fancy, added the Arkansas Traveller as prologue, changed the names of the characters and renamed the play Kit, the Arkansas Traveller. The familiar squatter became Kit, the hero and traveller, while the traveller became the villain. The play opened in Chicago in 1869. For the next thirty years, it played almost continuously to full houses in such cities as New York and Boston.25

As the popular Arkansas Traveller tale spread, so did the pictorial image created by Edward Payson Washbourne in his painting of ca. 1855. Washbourne was the son of the Reverend Cephus Washburn,26 who

brought his family to Arkansas in 1821. Washburn and six other And- over-trained missionaries immigrated at the request of the Cherokee

Nation, then occupying most of the Arkansas Ozarks. The missionaries established Dwight Mission on the Arkansas River above Little Rock. When the Cherokees were pushed farther west into what was called Indian Territory, the mission followed. In 1828, New Dwight was established in what is now northeast Oklahoma. It was there that Edward

(figure 1) was born in 1831. Washburn gave up the mission in 1840 and moved his family to

northwest Arkansas where he pastored a church and organized a school. Ten years later he became the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Fort Smith. While in Fort Smith, Edward began painting portraits and land-

scapes.27 In the spring of 1852, an itinerant portrait artist, H. Harding, was working across the Arkansas River in Van Buren. Harding allowed Washbourne to observe his work. This must have inspired Washbourne to begin his own career as an itinerant artist. In November of that same

year, Edward was painting portraits in Little Rock, where the editor of

25 Robert L. Morris, ''The Success of Kit, The Arkansas Traveler," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XX (Winter 1963), 338-350 passim.

26 Edward's spelling of the family name differed from his father's spelling. 27 George Lankford, "The Arkansas Traveller: The Making of an Icon," Mid-America

Folklore, X (19*2), 16.



Figure 1.

Self Portrait, Edward P. Washbourne, ca. 1857.

COURTESY ARKANSAS HISTORY COMMISSION, LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS




the Arkansas Gazette gave his work favorable reviews.28 Edward's success fueled his desire to study at the National Academy

oi Design and by 1853 he was off to New York. Two years later, Wash- bourne returned to Arkansas where his career as an itinerant portraitist took him throughout the state. June 1856 found him at the southwest Arkansas plantation of Colonel Ben Hawkins where he had gone "to rusticate a little and paint a little."29 A letter written on the sixth of that month to his brother Woodward in New York reveals that Washbourne had already completed his most famous work. "I think it probable that I will be there myself this winter to lay in a good supply of materials etc. and see about getting the Arkansas traveller Engraved."30 It was not until 1859, however, that Washbourne had the painting engraved by Leopold Grozelier of Boston (figure 2). In March 1860 Cephus Wash- burn paid a visit to his son in Little Rock where he contracted pneu- monia and died on the seventeenth.31 Edward came down with the same

malady and died, at age twenty-eight, nine days after his father.32 Ten

years after Edward's death, Currier and Ives copyrighted a set of two

companion prints, The Arkansas Traveller and The Turn of the Tune

(figures 3 and 4). A poorly restored Arkansas Traveller (figure 5) was donated along

with several Washbourne paintings to the Arkansas History Commission in 1957 by Washburn descendants. Some scholars believe that the painting is the original and that its poor quality and dissimilarity to the Grozelier lithograph are due to its destructive "restoration." A photo- graph taken of the painting prior to restoration, however, reveals that it was changed little in content.33 One scholar believes that it is a copy of the original, painted by Washbourne and given to his parents while the

28 Margaret Ross, "Edward Payson Washburn had Artistic Ability, and became Well- known Painter," Little Rock Arkansas Gazette, March 26, 1967; cited hereinafter as Ross, "Edward Washburn, Painter."

29 Ibid. 30 Letter of Edward Washbourne to Woodward Washbourne, July 6, 1856, in Margaret

Ross, "Edward Washburn, Painter." 31Lankford, "The Arkansas Traveller," 18. 32 "Death of Edward Payson Washbourne," True Democrat, March 31, 1860. 33 See Workers of the Writers' Program of the Works Projects Administration, Arkan-

sas: A Guide to the State (New York, 1941), 126.



Figure 2. The Arkansas Traveller, J. H. Buflford; Leopold Grozelier, engraver, 1859.

COURTESY ARKANSAS HISTORY COMMISSION, LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

original was being engraved.84 The painting, however, may be neither the original nor a Washbourne copy.

The general proportions and the backward S in the "whisky" sign above the cabin door indicate that the Arkansas History Commission's

painting is related to the Grozelier engraving, not the Currier and Ives

print of 1870. Beyond the representation of the general image, however, the similarities end. Elements contained in the print, such as the tree

stump, daughter combing her hair, and dogs, are missing from the painting. Other features existing in both, such as the gable end logs of the

cabin, are distorted in the painting.

34 See Lankford, "The Arkansas Traveller."



Figure 3. The Arkansas Traveller, Currier and Ives, 1870. COURTESY PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

It is doubtful that Washbourne, raised on the frontier, would have made the error in the log cabin's construction. It is also doubtful that

Leopold Grozelier could have corrected this error or added the missing elements to the scene from the backwoods of Arkansas. Even if the French-born Boston lithographer was familiar with the cultural setting and its accoutrements, he would not have been allowed the license of correction and elaboration.35 Grozelier's responsibility as lithographer was to reproduce, as accurately as possible, Washbourne's painting. Washbourne held the copyright and was responsible for the distribution of the prints.36 The Arkansas Traveller at the Arkansas History Com- mission may be a copy made from the Grozelier lithograph by another artist which was given or sold to the Washburn family.

35 For a brief biographical sketch of Leopold Grozelier see Harry T. Peters, America on Stone (Garden City, N. Y., 1931; reprint ed., New York, 1976), 200.

36 At his death Edward Washbourne had in his possession an inventory of distributors with the number of prints held by each and the engraving's copyright. See Probate Inven- tory of Edward P. Washbourne, May 26, 1860, Washburn Collection (Arkansas History Commission, Little Rock, Ark.)



Figure 4. The Turn of the Tune, Currier and Ives, 1870. COURTESY PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Where then is the original Arkansas Traveller ? It is known that the

painting hung in the Cephus Washburn home at Norristown37 after Edward's death. Edward's brother, Henry, writes in 1860:

Our home is hung around with brother's paintings, I look up, I see his own dearly loved face and other portraits, just as he placed them. But alas, his and father's portraits and the 'Traveler' hange [sic] covered with crepe.38

By 1866, however, the painting was lost. Woodward Washbourne writes to his wife from Washington, D. C, "Jno. D. Adams [an Arkansan] was here yesterday. He was undertaken to get a man who will find the 'Arkansas Traveler' for me." Later he writes,

I do hope I will be able to get these pictures for the sake of my

37 Shortly after Edward's return from New York in 1855, Cephus Washburn moved a final time to Norristown, near the site of the original Dwight Mission; Margaret Ross, "Edward Washburn, Painter."

38 Mrs. Harry Dodd, "Another Pope County Heritage: 'The Arkansas Traveler'," Washburn Collection, p. 5.



Figure 5. The Arkansas Traveller. COURTESY ARKANSAS HISTORY COMMISSION, LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

dear brother's memory, the most sacred thing on earth to me, and to put into my aged mother's hand the gold that will lift her from the tired, hard and heart breaking life now weighing her down to the grave.39

From the facts associated with the painting and its engravings and the above family correspondences, some conclusions as to what happened to the Arkansas Traveller may be drawn. It will be recalled that when Edward Washbourne died, his mother had lost her husband just nine

days earlier. The surviving Washburn children may have sought a second engraving to "put into . . . [their] mother's hand the gold that will lift her." Oral tradition has it that "certain parties had contracted and

*»lbid., 3.




obtained permission to make reprints of 'The Traveler' and the owners would be paid a commission on the sales. Not one penny had ever been

paid."40 The agreement must have occurred in the last months of 1860 or the early months of 1861. The painting was sent to New York, but became lost to the Washburns during the Civil War. After the war, Woodward was sent to Washington, D. C, as agent for the Cherokees. While on the east coast, he made an unsuccessful search for his brother's

painting. One year prior to Woodward's death in 1871, Currier and Ives pro-

duced their own version of The Arkansas Traveller (figure 3). This

print, however, was one of a set of two engravings. The second print, entitled The Turn of the Tune, illustrates the second part of the tale when the traveller fiddles for the squatter (figure 4). The Grozelier print had no companion. At Washbourne's death in 1860, a Second Scene of the Arkansas Traveler was on his easel.41 Could it have been that a Cur- rier and Ives artist had the same idea as Washbourne or did the company have the paintings in its possession in 1870? Woodward's reference to "these pictures" supports the idea that both paintings had been sent to New York. There are no claims as to the whereabouts of the companion painting and no facsimiles are known to exist. The fate of the Arkansas Traveller may be tied to that of the companion. Perhaps they are both lost.

The Grozelier print of 1859 is, therefore, the closest reliable representation of Washbourne's original Arkansas Traveller. The image may be classified as genre. That is, it depicts a scene from everyday life.

Although the Arkansas Traveller is based upon a legend, it, like all genre paintings, depicts a scene which, if not actual, could have been actual. The setting of the Arkansas Traveller is a homestead located in a river

valley. Through the tale and the title, we know that it is the homestead of a squatter in Arkansas. The mountains illustrated in the upper left corner run parallel to a relatively wide river. These mountains are un-

doubtedly the Ouachitas, distinguished from the Ozarks by their long east-west ridges. The river is probably the Arkansas. This locates the homestead west of Little Rock in keeping with the said location of the

40 Ibid., 2. 41 Probate Inventory of Edward P. Washbourne.




1840 exchange between Colonel Faulkner and a squatter. The location, too, would be on the route well travelled by Washbourne to visit his parents in Fort Smith. It is ironic that a river instead of a road is pictured because the print's namesake is travelling by horseback. Perhaps this reflects a frustrated wish. The river was vital to the settlement and

development of Arkansas. Yet, the Arkansas River above Little Rock was hardly navigable by steamboat in 1840.

The physical features of the homestead are representative of those in the first half of the nineteenth century. The squatter's dwelling is built of whole or unhewn logs interlocked at the corners with saddle notching. The cabin's roof is not framed in the common Anglo-American manner with paired rafters unsupported by a ridgepole. Rather, the cabin has a

purlin roof, a roof type thought to be of Scandinavian origin.42 Logs of

diminishing lengths are carried to the roof apex in the gable ends. Purlins or logs running parallel to the length of the building are notched into the gable end logs. The purlins are covered with rived shingles. In the print, a few shingles are missing reflecting the tale's reference to a

leaky roof. The cabin's doorway is inappropriately wide. Here Wash- bourne used artistic license in order to depict the squatter's family as onlookers from within the cabin.

Although only a portion of the cabin appears in the print, several conclusions may be drawn about the structure as a whole. Its general proportions indicate that it was probably a single-pen or one-room dwell-

ing. Cabins of this type usually had an exterior chimney on a gable end. It is understood that the chimney stands on the gable end not shown in the print. Also not pictured are windows, which may or may not have existed on a cabin of this type. Contrary to the popular misconception that the squatter's dwelling is more like an outbuilding than a house, it is, in fact, a typical pioneer phase log dwelling. The misconception stems from the fact that no such dwellings are known to exist in Arkansas

today. Commonly constructed upon initial settlement throughout the South, pioneer phase dwellings did exist in Arkansas. They were recorded by German traveller Friedrich Gerstacker, and Englishman

42 Henry Glassie, "The Types of the Southern Mountain Cabin" in Jan Harold Brun- vand, ed., The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction (New York, 1978), 402.




George Featherstonhaugh, in the late 1830s48 and Dallas T. Herndon recalls the construction of one in his Centennial History of Arkansas.44 Considered temporary structures, they were rapidly being replaced by the 1850s with wood-frame buildings and the more familiar hewn log structures with box corners and rafter roofs.

Other buildings, such as a privy, smokehouse, and grain crib, would have been part of the squatter's homestead ensemble. None are illustrated. However, three typical structures crafted by the squatter are de-

picted. At lower center is a wooden watering trough for dogs and/or livestock. The V-shaped structure at left is an ash-hopper. Used to store hardwood ashes, it contained an opening at the bottom under which sat a trough. Water was poured over the ashes, leaching out alkali which was collected from the trough and used to make soap.45 The tree trunk at the cabin's gable end could be a cistern, a tanning vat, or a mill which "was more like a mortar than anything else."46

Objects found in the print include an abundance of gourds which were used not only as nesting places for pest-ridding birds but also to store salt, gun powder, and shot. Animal skins were commonly stretched on scaffolds or, like the depicted coonskin, on buildings.47 Skins were valuable as trade items and for their practical use as storage containers, hinges, bindings, and as attire such as the coonskin cap and deerskin moccasins worn by the squatter.

Leaning against the door frame at right is a rifle accompanied by a

powder horn. Due to the isolation of Arkansas in 1840, flintlocks rather than caplocks were still in common use. On the frontier, the rifle was

necessary to survival in giving protection and as a means of providing food. The axe, leaning against the ash-hopper, was used in land clearing

43Friedrich W. Gerstacker, Wild Sports in the Far West: The Narrative of a German Wanderer beyond the Mississippi, 18^-184^ (Durham, N. C, 1968) ; George W. Feather- stonhaugh, Excursion Through the Slave States from Washington on the Potomac, to the Frontier of Mexico: With Sketches of Popular Manners and Geological Notes (New York, 1844).

44 Dallas T. Herndon, Centennial History of Arkansas (3 vols., Hopkinsville, Ky. and Little Rock, Ark., 1947), I, 198.

45 Everett Newfon Dick, The Dixie Frontier: A Social History of the Southern Frontier

from the First Transmontane Beginnings to the Civil War (New York, 1964), 255. 46Gerstacker, Wild Sports in the Far West, 250. 47 Dick, The Dixie Frontier, 29.




and construction. Although both the rifle and the axe were symbols of the frontier, they carried separate connotations. The rifle represented the earliest or survival phase of man's entry into the wilderness while the axe, as later celebrated by Walt Whitman in "Song of the Broad- Axe," was a later symbol of domestication. The representation of both the rifle and the axe in the Arkansas Traveller reflects the transitional role of the

squatter. Literally, a squatter was one who occupied land that did not

belong to him. In common usage, however, the term implied more. He was part hunter, part subsistence farmer who would just as soon fiddle as clear land.

Washbourne's squatter family is a fair representation of households on the frontier. Families were large, often including as many as six children. Boys and girls under six looked alike with hair cut short and dressed in a long shirt. Women wore plain dresses of linsey-woolsey and, like the squatter's wife, often wore their hair in a knot at the nape of the neck. Men wore breeches of linsey-woolsey and shirts often of the same.

Although buckskin attire had all but disappeared by 1840, leather moccasins and coonskin caps continued to be worn. The squatter's wife smokes a corn cob pipe which was commonly used by both sexes prior to the Civil War.48 Dogs were also part of the frontier household. It was not unusual for a settler to have half a dozen.

The print's namesake travels alone as did Gerstacker and Feather-

stonhaugh. With outstretched arm he is questioning the squatter. Even

though the Arkansas Gazette carried news of travellers leaving the road and becoming lost,49 these were rare incidents. Washbourne's traveller

probably was not lost but asking about the condition of the roads ahead, alternate routes, and the distance to the next house that might accom- modate him. Travellers commonly stayed in settlers' homes. Within a

given area, there were common rates for bed, meals, and feed for one's horse.

The usual price for supper, bed, and breakfast - be the same good or bad - is half a dollar. . . . The charge for a horse depends upon the neighbourhood, and the price of Indian corn. In the

^Ibid., 295-298; John Gould Fletcher, Arkansas (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1947), 78. 49 Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans- Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and

Institutions, 1775-1850 (New York, 1978), 282.




swamps it was half a dollar; in Oiltrove Bottom [Oil Trough, Independence County], only a quarter, corn being cheap there; further south, the charge was higher; and to the northeast again it was cheaper.50

The success of one's trip often depended upon the hospitality of the resi- dents along the route.

Occasionally, travellers stayed in taverns. In rural areas, however, taverns were not much more than settler's homes where whiskey was sold. Washbourne's squatter kept such a tavern. As fifty cents worth of corn made five to ten dollars worth of whiskey, distilling began early and was particularly common in mountainous areas.51 Whiskey barrels could be recycled, used to catch water for storage, or used, as by Wash- bourne's squatter, as makeshift furniture.

The traveller's attire and possession of a horse reflect a socio-economic status much different than that of the squatter. The traveller and the

squatter are worlds apart. Yet, we know from the tale and from Wash- bourne's intended second scene illustrated by Currier and Ives, that they have a common bond. Both not only know how to fiddle, but also know the same tune. During the first half of the nineteenth century, music was found in abundance and dancing became an obsession not only in Arkansas,52 but throughout the nation as well.53 On the frontier pianos were rare but fiddles were common. The man who played the fiddle "was an important personage, looked upon with almost as much respect and reverence as the country parson."54 The music of the fiddle may have been one of the few things enjoyed by all on the Arkansas frontier.

Travel is the operative in the print. It explains the chance meeting of the traveller and the squatter. The traveller is on a mission; he has people to meet, business to transact. There is a sense of urgency about him. The

squatter, who has remained seated at the approach of the stranger, is more interested in playing his fiddle than in the stranger. Even the dogs,

50Gerstacker, Wild Sports in the Far West, 198499. 61 Dick, The Dixie Frontier, 254. 52 Gerstacker, Wild Sports in the Far West, passim. 63 Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New

York, 1931), 108 and 119. 54 John Quincy Wolf, Life in the Leatherwoods (Memphis, 1974), 120.




who otherwise would have been riled by the stranger's presence, have taken on their owner's lackadaisical attitude.

John M. Peck, Timothy Flint, and Robert Baird, who watched and recorded the events of the frontier, and Frederick Jackson Turner who theorized about the frontier, would have seen the squatter and the traveller as representatives of two separate waves of human kind which crossed the American West. First were the hunter-trappers, then the squatters, semi-agriculturalists of a sort. They were followed by the farmers who were in turn followed by men of capital and enterprise.55 In the early 1820s, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft found in Arkansas the first of these waves of settlers. He saw hunters and squatters, who were "half indian," [sic] "a race of men possessing remarkable traits of character and manners which are a compound of civility and barbarism.56 Arkansas was also the home of fugitives who were attracted by the feebleness of the law.57 Friedrich Gerstacker, who toured Arkansas fifteen years after

Schoolcraft, saw these first settlers reacting to the crush of an oncoming civilization.58 As new settlers crowded the land, driving away game, and

enacting taxation and "a whole calendar of restricting laws," the hunter, the squatter, and the fugitive moved farther west,59 while men of enter-

prise, such as Albert Pike, celebrated the conquest of "a matted and

mighty forest" by "the towering wave of emigration."60 The decade of 1840 represented a new high in development, particu-

larly for the earlier settled areas of Arkansas considering themselves part of the greater South. The spirit of the cotton South centered in Little Rock.61 The city, as capital, was the focus of economic, political, and social life for the entire state. But for all its cotton, steamboats, and plantation aspirations, Little Rock was still a frontier town,62 "emerging from a state of shocking violence and depravity."63 It was said that there

55 Henry L. Swint, "Ho for Arkansas," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, XXIV (Autumn 1965), 206.

56 Dick, The Dixie Frontier, 23-24. 57Masterson, Tall Tales of Arkansas, 1-2. 58 Gerstacker, Wild Sports in the Far West, passim. 59 Dick, The Dixie Frontier, 24. 60Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier, 285. 61 Ibid., 289. Q2Ibid., 287. 63 Swint, "Ho for Arkansas," 202.




were not a dozen men who went into the streets without being armed with pistols or knives. Daily there were quarrels and shootings in the streets.64

The idea of settlement in successive waves had been an abstraction. On the frontier, the respective waves of humanity intermingled. Judges of the territory were seen drinking in the taverns with the trapper. At

any given locale a buckskinned backwoodsman could be seen next to a

lawyer in waistcoat. Some of the state's leading citizens were given to the kind of violence thought to have been practiced only by the backwoodsman. In 1837, the speaker of the house killed a colleague with a Bowie knife during a legislative debate. As Turner states, many of the frontier's settlers individually possessed characteristics of several of the waves. Many were as versatile as Fent Noland who "wields the pen or the bowie knife with the same thought"66 or Little Rock's first mayor, who combined with his duties as chief magistrate those of justice of the

peace, schoolteacher, bookkeeper, clerk in the post office, house and sign painter, glazier, and "general tinker."66 Violence, diversity, and versa-

tility characterized the Arkansas frontier. An immigrant guide warned that one must prepare for a "variety of everything called human."67

By the 1850s Arkansas had undergone a transformation. The frontier had passed, yet in many areas it was an enduring frontier. Its society had

matured, yet this maturity only served to heighten social differences. As

early as 1836, when Arkansas entered the Union, two distinct cultures had arisen in the state's two major physiographic regions. The Gulf Coastal Plain and the Mississippi Delta were characterized by large scale cotton cultivation, slavery, and a developing planter class. The Ozark and Ouachita mountains were settled by subsistence farmers from the

Upper South, who raised cotton, grains, and livestock. Arkansas history through the Civil War is, in fact, the story of struggle between these two cultures. Lowland interests usually won out to the disadvantage of up- land interests.68 Holding Arkansas together as one political unit were

64 Dick, The Dixie Frontier, 322. 65 Arlington, The Lives and Adventures of the Desperadoes of the South-West, 73. 66 Dick, The Dixie Frontier, 336. 67Swint, "Ho for Arkansas," 203. 68 David M. Tucker, Arkansas: A People and Their Reputation (Memphis, 1985), 1-34.




the common needs typical of western or frontier areas: order in society, improvement in communication and transportation facilities, and gov- ernmental assistance in all of the preceding.69 Arkansas's culture prior to the Civil War was characterized, then, by contrasts: Lower South-

Upper South, planter-farmer, urban-rural, squatter-entrepreneur. It was exactly these contrasts in cultural and socio-economic groups

that the Southwest humorist preserved in literature and turned into humor. The title of the Arkansas Traveller print singles out the traveller as main character. The composition of the print, however, tells us that there are two main figures. The highlighted circle in the foreground draws both the traveller and the squatter into the center of focus. The

print is not about the traveller nor the squatter, but about the meeting of the two. We, the viewers, like the squatter's family, are onlookers to the presumed exchange.

In the 1850s when Washbourne created his painting, the squatter, as a type, was disappearing as rapidly as the pioneer phase cabin. The

squatter was still to be found, but represented a low rung on the socio- economic ladder. The traveller reflected a high rung on the same ladder. Neither the squatter nor the traveller were typical Arkansans. Both, however, were characters of the frontier. Washbourne, in keeping with the tale, intentionally chose the two to demonstrate social contrast. He, like Faulkner, had found an instrument other than the pen to portray Southwest humor. The Arkansas Traveller is Southwest humor on canvas.

Washbourne was primarily a portrait artist. Although portraiture was popular in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was difficult for an artist to support himself on that medium alone in the Old Southwest. T. B. Thorpe found this to be the case in Louisiana and turned from

painting to writing.70 Washbourne was one of perhaps half a dozen artists earning a livelihood in Arkansas in the 1850s. He, like many artists of his day, was not without a certain entrepreneurial spirit who

supplemented his income through the medium of printmaking. Wash- bourne is known to have produced panoramic views of the city of Fort

69Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier, 287. 70 Lynn, Mar\ Twain and Southwestern Humor, 89.




Smith which were engraved and sold throughout the state.71 Following the entrepreneurial spirit, Washbourne capitalized upon

the already popular Arkansas Traveller by giving the tale a pictorial image. The subtitle of the 1859 Grozelier print reads "Designed by one of the natives and Dedicated to Col. S. C. Faulkner." Below the subtitle is a single staff of the fiddle tune "as originally played."72 Washbourne's

probate inventory lists no less than 1,500 copies of this print held by thirty distributors located in over twenty-five cities throughout the United States, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D. C, Nashville, St. Louis, Memphis, Little Rock, and Columbia, South Caro- lina. Although the executor of Washbourne's estate valued the prints at

approximately 75 cents each, they are said to have sold for $2.50,73 no small amount in 1860.

The Arkansas Traveller image, like the tale and the tune, soon took hold in the mind of popular America. The earliest version of the "Arkan- sas Traveller" (ca. 1862) by Mose Case told the story of a traveller on foot. An illustration on the cover of the sheet music depicted the traveller with a cane standing at a snake fence in front of a double-pen log house. A woman stands in a doorway while a man, in top hat and tails, sits on the threshold playing a violin.74 A different illustration, however, was used in 1864 on the cover of the Arkansas Traveler's Song Boo\ (figure 6). The gypsy-like fiddler sits on a barrel in front of a log cabin while the traveller, still on foot in the song, is on horseback.

Part of the popularity of the Arkansas Traveller may be attributed to the national affinity for genre painting and to an increasing interest in the West during the first half of the nineteenth century. During this

period, American art reflected a nation in search of identity. The mean-

ing of America was illustrated in the common activities of a people living in a new society in a new land. The American was William Sidney Mount's New England farmer and George Caleb Bingham's Missouri riverman. As the nation's settled areas became increasingly urbanized and as westward expansion became a national concern, scenes depicting

71 Interview with William B. Worthen, Arkansas Territorial Restoration, Little Rock, Arkansas, February 10, 1987.

72 Peters, America on Stone, plate 25. 73 Masterson, Tall Tales of Arkansau/, 359. 74 Ibid., 189.




frontier settlement grew in popularity.75 With advances in lithography allowing for mass production and with the development of chromo-

lithography, these scenes were made available to the middle and upper- middle class.76

In 1870 when the popular printmakers, Currier and Ives, produced their companion versions, the Arkansas Traveller image was reinvested. Currier and Ives prints were sold, generally for an inexpensive twenty cents, throughout the United States and abroad, making them available to a wide population.77 During the last fifteen years of the century a humor magazine, published by Opie Read first in Little Rock then in

Chicago, was called The Ar\ansaw Traveler. The publication's mast- head featured both scenes of the Currier and Ives The Arkansas Travel- ler?* The image continued to appear well into the twentieth century, as shown by an illustration on a sheet version of the tune published in 1929

(figure 7). When the popular Arkansas Traveler's Song Boo\ was published in

1864, the preface to "The Arkansas Traveller" read as follows: "This

piece is intended to represent an Eastern man's experience among the inhabitants of Arkansas, showing their hospitality and the mode of

obtaining it." The squatter and his family were typical Arkansans and their log cabin the typical Arkansas dwelling, while the traveller was an easterner who "has never had the courage to visit Arkansas since!"79

During the last half of the nineteenth century, this became the popular interpretation of the tale and its pictorial representation.

By the turn of the century, the reaction against this interpretation within the state of Arkansas was vehement. In 1895 William F. Pope wrote, "the picture with its accompanying colloquy, which has had wide

spread circulation has done untold injury to the good name of the State

75 Theodore E. Stebbins, Carol Troyen, and Trevor J. Fairbrother, A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, iy6o-ig2o (Boston, 1983), 106-107 and 274-275.

76 See Peter C. Marzio, The Democratic Art: Pictures for a Nineteenth-Century Amer- ica (Boston, 1979).

77 A. Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People: A Social History of Printed Pictures (New York, 1971), 226.

78 Perry Duis, Chicago: Creating New Traditions (Chicago, 1976), 124-125. 79 Dick and Fitzgerald, Arkansas Traveler's Song Boo\, 5.



Figure 6. Illustration on the cover of the Arkansas Traveler's Song Boof{,

New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1864. COURTESY MUSIC LIBRARY, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS



Figure 7. Illustration on the cover of the "Arkansas Traveler/'

arranged by David W. Guion, published by G. Schirmer, Inc., 1929. COURTESY MARY HUDGINS COLLECTION, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS,

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS LIBRARIES, FAYETTEVILLE




and her people,"80 Another Arkansan stated, in 1900, that is was "a mis-

representation and a slur," and had "checked immigration" and "done incalculable injury to the State."81 Efforts to refute the image made direct reference to it, as demonstrated by the opening stanzas of "Arkan- sas, Fair Arkansas."

The traveler no longer finds The fiddler at a cabin door,

Philosophizing as he plays -

But he may wonders great explore In Arkansas, Fair Arkansas.

Time has transformed a back-woods land Into a busy, modern State.

The easy-going days are gone, And sland'rous jests are out of date

'Bout Arkansas, Fair Arkansas.82

In the early twentieth century the negative Arkansas Traveller image was used by the urban Country Life Movement in their campaign to

bring rural America twentieth century standards and to teach farmers

greater efficiency and productivity through mechanization. Rural institutions - schools, churches, and politics - were viewed as pre-industrial relics in a modern industrial America.83 Arkansas, a predominantly rural state, was singled out by Henry L. Mencken and others as being particularly backward.84 During the 1920s progressive Arkansans sought to counter the state's negative image by changing the state's nickname from "Bear State" to "Wonder State" and by forming the Arkansas Advance- ment Association which hired former governor Charles H. Brough to

spread the good news about Arkansas on the Chautauqua circuit.85 How- ever, the backward image of the state was reinvested by Thomas W.

Jackson's On a Slow Train through Arkansas and Bob Burns and Lum

80 Pope, Early Days in Arkansas, 709. 81 Mercer, "The Arkansas Traveler," 709. 82Masterson, Tall Tales of Ar\ansaw, 302. 83 Tucker, Arkansas, 67-68. 84Foy Lisenby, "A Survey of Arkansas's Image Problem," Arkansas Historical Quar-

terly, XXX (Spring 1971), 63. 85 Tucker, Arkansas, 69.




and Abner capitalized upon the homespun image of their native state, much to the chagrin of many Arkansans.86 In recent years Arkansans have turned the image around bringing conservation minded and urban- tired immigrants to the "Natural State" and tourists to the Ozark Folk Center and the Arkansas Traveller Folk Theater.

The Arkansas Traveller, as created by Washbourne in ca. 1855, is

genre in that its features were taken from the real life of a particular locale. It is something more, however. It is not only a painting of the Old Southwest but one from the Old Southwest. The representation of the encounter between the traveller and the squatter makes it part of the

region's larger expression of Southwest humor. As the image became

nationally popular in the last half of the nineteenth century, its original contextual meaning was lost. As individuals naturally placed themselves in the role of the traveller, the squatter became the typical Arkansan, while the traveller became an outsider. As the image spread from

regional to national culture, its original contextual meaning was lost. The Arkansas Traveller was subsequently used by Arkansans and others for both negative and positive imagery giving testament to widespread identification of the image in popular America.

APPENDIX: "THE ARKANSAS TRAVELLER"

The following dialogue, attributed to Colonel Sandford Faulkner, was first published by Edward Washbourne to accompany the Arkansas Traveller print engraved by Leopold Grozelier in 1859 (Masterson, Tall Tales of Ar\ansaw, 187-189 and 358).

Traveller: Halloo, stranger. Squatter: Hello yourself . T : Can I get to stay all night with you ? S: No, sir, you can't git to -

T: Have you any spirits here ? S : Lots uv 'em; Sal seen one last night by that ar ole hollar gum, and it

nearly skeered her to death. T: You mistake my meaning; have you any liquor?

86Lisenby, "Arkansas's Image Problem/' 64.




S : Had some yesterday, but Ole Bose he got in and lapped all uv it out'n the pot.

T: You don't understand; I don't mean pot liquor. I'm wet and cold and want some whiskey. Have you got any ?

S: Oh, yes - I drunk the last this mornin. T: I'm hungry; haven't had a thing since morning; can't you give me

something to eat? S: Hain't a durned thing in the house. Not a moufful uv meat, nor a

dust uv meal here. T: Well, can't you give my horse something? S: Got nothin' to feed him on. T: How far is it to the next house ? S: Stranger! I don't know, I've never been thar. T: Well, do you know who lives here? S: Yeszir! T: As I'm so bold, then, what might your name be? S : It might be Dick, and it might be Tom ; but it lacks right smart uv it. T: Sir! will you tell me where this road goes to? S: It's never gone any whar since I've lived here; It's always thar when

I git up in the mornin'. T: Well, how far is it to where it forks ? S: It don't fork at all; but it splits up like the devil. T: As I'm not likely to get to any other house to night, can't you let me

sleep in yours; and I'll tie my horse to a tree, and do without anything to eat or drink?

S: My house leaks. Thar's only one dry spot in it, and me and Sal sleeps on it. And that thar tree is the ole woman's persimon; you can't tie to it, 'caze she don't want 'em shuk off. She 'lows to make beer out'n um.

T: Why don't you finish covering your house and stop the leaks? S: It's been rainin' all day. T: Well, why don't you do it in dry weather? S: It don't leak then. T: As there seems to be nothing alive about your place but children, how

do you do here anyhow ? S: Putty well, I thank you, how do you do yourself?




T: I mean what do you do for a living here ? S: Keep tavern and sell whisky. T: Well, I told you I wanted some whisky. S: Stranger, I bought a bar'l more'n a week ago. You see, me and Sal

went shars. After we got it here, we only had a bit betweenst us, and Sal she didn't want to use hern fust, nor me mine. You see I had a

spiggin in one end, and she in tother. So she takes a drink out'n my end, and pays me the bit for it; then I'd take one out'n hern, and give her the bit. Well, we's getting long fust-rate, till Dick, durned skulk-

ing skunk, he born a hole in the bottom to suck at, and the next time I went to buy a drink, they wont none thar.

T: I'm sorry your whisky's all gone; but, my friend, why don't you play the balance of that tune ?

S: It's got no balance to it. T: I mean you don't play the whole of it. S: Stranger, can you play the fiddul? T: Yes, a little, sometimes. S : You don't look like a fiddlur, but ef you think you can play any more

onto that thar tune, you kin just try it.

(The traveler takes the fiddle and plays the whole of it.) S: Stranger, tuck a half a duzen cheers and sot down. Sal, stir yourself

round like a six-horse team in a mud hold. Go round in the hollar whar I killed that buck this mornin', cut off some of the best pieces, and f otch it and cook it for me and this gentleman, d'rectly. Raise up the board under the head of the bed, and got the ole black jug I hid from Dick, and gin us some whisky; I know thar's some left yit. Til, drive ole Bose out'n the bread-tray, then climb up in the loft, and git the rag that's got the sugar tied in it. Dick, carry the gentleman's hoss round under the shead, give him so fodder and corn; much as he kin eat.

Til: Dad, they ain't knives enuff for to sot the table. S: Whar's big butch, little butch, ole case, cob-handle, granny's knife,

and the one I handled yesterday! That's nuff to sot any gentleman's table, outer you've lost um. Durn me, stranger, ef you can't stay as

long as you please, and I'll give you plenty to eat and to drink. Will

you have coff ey for supper ?




T: Yes, sir. S: I'll be hanged if you do, tho', we don't have nothin' that way here,

but Grub Hyson [sassafras tea], and I reckon it's mighty good with sweetnin'. Play away, stranger, you kin sleep on the dry spot to-night.

T. (After about two hours fiddling.) My friend, can't you tell me about the road I'm to travel to-morrow ?

S: Tomorrow ! Stranger, you won't git out'n these diggins for six weeks. But when it gits so you kin start, you see that big sloo over thar ?

Well, you have to git crost that, then you take the road up the bank, and in about a mile you'll come to a two-acre-and-a-half cornpatch. The corn's mityly in the weeds, but you needn't mind that; jist ride on. About a mile and half or two miles from thar, you'll cum to the damdest swamp you ever struck in all your travels; it's boggy enouff to mire a saddle-blanket. Thar's a fust rate road about six feet under thar.

T: How am I to get at it? S : You can't git at it nary time, till the weather stiffens down sum. Well,

about a mile beyant, you come to a place what thar's no roads. You kin take the right hand if you want to; you'll f oiler it a mile or so, and you'll find its run out; you'll then have to come back and try the

left; when you git about two miles on that, you may know you're wrong, fur they ain't any road thar. You'll then think you're mity lucky ef you kin find the way back to my house, whar you kin cum and play on thara'r tune as long as you please.



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"The Arkansas Traveller:" Southwest Humor on Canvas

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