THE OLD HOME WEEK BOOK
History of the Village of Prospect, PA

Transcribed and Donated by Robert A. Stumpf

Chapter VII

Droves

Our mutual friend, beloved of us all, Mr. McCulloch, in his introductory remarks has referred to the immense droves of cattle which once went through Prospect. It is not consistent with the history of the place to pass them by without further notice. They were one of the features of the village in their day, equally with the ball-playing the excursions, and the arrival of the daily coach from Pittsburgh.

One of the most vivid recollections of the writer's childhood is of the great herds of cattle and flocks of sheep and strings of horses and droves of hogs that came through the long street of the village. Away from the west, long before they could be seen, the cloud of dust which they raised, told us of their approach. Then the excitement of the boys mounted to fever height. At once the cry went up: "A drove is coming! A drove is coming!" Every mother's son of all the little rascals who heard it repeated the cry: "A drove! A drove!" "A drove is coming." In great excitement we ran about, choosing each our coign of vantage, a safe and comfortable spot on which to place ourselves, to witness the passing of the coming flock, herd, string or whatever it might be. In the sheep we did not take much interest. "Only sheep", we said, and were disappointed. They furnished no excitement. They stirred up so much dust as to almost choke and blind us; but one flock left a reminder which the writer will never forget. A sheep fell down and died just by our home. One of the drovers said whoever would take it away might have it. He said the skin of it was worth a half a dollar. Will Douglass, who was a little younger than the writer, and the writer himself, agreed to take the dead sheep away. We agreed to go together as partners with equal shares. The day was very warm but our visiions of prospective wealth were warmer. We got butcher-knives, took the carcass by the hind-legs and dragged it out a mile over the way it came and perspired accordingly. The wool on that dead sheep caught very stone on the road and held like glue. What a drag it was!

We were hours, no one knows how many, in dragging it to the place __ where we concluded to stop. The thing was heavy beyond all comprehension, and the day was hot almost beyond human endurance. Every step the awful carcass seemed to catch the ground and hold on to it, and we were light. It was hard pulling. But we perspired and tugged away, often stopping to rest and to plan what we would do with our half dollar, which, amicably, we agreed to divide and share equally, which no one can say was not proper and right. After all our work we finally reached a spot by the road-side where we thought we could safely leave the carcass after we had taken the skin off, and then we hung it up in the fence-corner and proceeded to flay it. That was a long, tedious and ill-smelling operation. We were both young boys. Neither of us knew how to go about it and we had to be very careful to not cut holes in the skin. But we stuck to our job manfully and finally had the satisfaction of completing our work. Then we started for home rejoicing, carrying our sheep-skin with us, anxious only to find a purchaser. But alas! for the schemes and hopes of expected wealth, nobody had any use for it. We carried it to every store-keeper in the village and not one would buy it. We carried the dirty thing, evil smelling enough to disgust whoever came in range of it, to every possible purchaser, only to meet with a refusal, and then, as a last resort, took it to Andrew Douglas, the tanner. He offered us six cents for it, which, being the only offer we had, we accepted. We each received a silver three cent piece for our sheep-skin. It is doubtful if ever money was more hardly earned.

But when a herd of cattle came another story was to tell. Then the excitement among the boys ran high. Long-horned steers from Texas formed the advancing host. Fresh from their feeding grounds in Montana, Colorado and Kansas, via Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, they came, wild as deer and always on the alert for a chance to escape from the thralldom of their environmnt. One man came in the front of each herd, leading an ox with an enormous spread of horns, such as the butchers of today, the meat-sellers, rather, -- take pride in sticking up in a conspicuous place in their shops, six or eight feet across, enormous was the spread of the horns of the lead ox and the others following were little less, the man calling, "C'boss! C'boss! Whoo! WHOO! WHOOKEY! WHOOKEY!" One rode a shaggy pony on each side along the middle of the line, back and forth, heading off the attmpt of any ox to leave the ranks, and another one or more came behind shouting, "Hoy! Whoo! WHOO! HOYE! HOYEE!" and cracking a whip with a sound like a pistol shot. Those whips were our admiration. The handles were not more than a foot long but the round, plaited, leathern lashes, an inch thick in the middle and tapering to each end, were twelve or fourteen feet in length. We firmly believed that those men with those whips could cut the bark off a tree or lay open the hide of a steer at every crack if they wished. Once in a while some poor, over-wrouht beast, frantic from being driven beyond endurance, suffering from thirst and heat, would break away and gallop madly down some side street in the village, bellowing furiously; and then the cry would rise and spread: "Mad bull! Mad bull!" and away the boys would scamper, terrified, through the gardens, into the houses, anywhere to find a safe refuge from the citadel of which, be it porch or window, they might gaze in trembling excitement until the uproar subsided.

Those cattle were the advance guard and also the rear guard of the overland cattle-shipments from the Texas breeding grounds. They did not travel long that way. The reasons why the Texas cattle came this way were various. There was the settlement of Texas after its admission into the United States, and the expansion of the pastoral interests of the new State. It was a natural breeding-ground but not suitable to the maturing of marketable beef. A northern climate was necessary to the maturing of Texas cattle. The subjection of the Indians of the plains was followed by the sudden development of the great West. The congested ranges of the Southwest, subject to seasons of severe drouth, sent their herds out on the newly-opened trails from Texas to Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas. Millions of the long-horns moved northward and disclosed resources that surprised the world. They were driven to the Northwest to mature and fatten. There every one or two winters added a gain of from three to four hundred pounds weight per head more than if kept to maturity on their native range. And then, after maturing, they were driven East and so some of them came through Prospect with every hoof doubled in value over the worth of it at the starting point. The packing houses and the frozen-meat business, of course, changed all this, and now everything is different. Only the old men, who then were boys, saw the great herds of cattle, droves of sheep, the hogs and horses that were taken through Prospect on their way to the markets of the East. Probably nobody will ever see those herds and cavalcades on those roads again.

The hogs and horses we had little interest in; because the former were slow and uninteresting and the latter were under control which precluded the hope of excitement. The horses were usually led in groups of eight; one man at the head of each group leading his eight, tied together, in orderly and well contolled array.

One incident alone imprints itself on the memory of the writer. Jim Spence, the stage-driver, came along the road ahead of a long, slabsided porker, shelling corn from an ear in his hand and scattering it in front of the beauty -- a razor backed, long-nosed member of the porcine tribe, tolling it along to its pen and death and saying, in response to some ironical comments of on-lookers, "I'll bet on Pumpkin Seed. She'll go for the corn."

The sheep always made the most dust fly and gave us the least excitement, but after one flock passed, Charley Warren found one lying by the road exhausted. He pitied it, made a shelter of leafy branches over it to protect it from the heat of the sun and then ran home and told his father. They came back with a wheel-barrow, brought the poor creature home and cared for it until it recovered. Then it was turned into the orchard where behold ! it had a lamb, and became the ancestress of a flock which grew in time to twenty or more.

When the dust of an advancing herd was observed rising in the distance, the good women along the route who had a line of clothes out drying, made haste to get them in, to save them from the defilement which settled, when the dust came down, on everything along the line of march.

The little boy, one day after a great herd of the long-horned cattle had passed through, found a long brown wallet inside the retaining wall of the cellar window of his father's store. It was a fat wallet, bulging with bank-notes and papers. He turned it over immediately to his father. Presently the scout, who had gone in advance of the droves to arrange for their night quarters and pasture, came riding back in great excitement, enquiring for the lost wallet. To his great joy it was returned to him and the boy was informed afterward that it contained fifteen hundred dollars beside papers of value -- but he didn't get any of of the money; however he had the satisfaction of finding it, and a boy always likes to find money and such things.

THE OLD HOME WEEK BOOK
History of the Village of Prospect, PA

Transcribed and Donated by Robert A. Stumpf

Chapter VIII

The Big Fourth

A skit which the writer published in one of the county newspapers ten years ago, describing the old time musters of militia, under the caption, "A Fourth of July Celebration Fifty Years Ago," may be inserted here, with such additional details as have been gathered.

It was in the village of Prospect where I was then a very little boy. A letter from a friend some years my senior, (the Hon. A.W. McCulloch, co-worker on this book), called attention to "The Big Fourth" of July celebration in Prospect in 1851, and furnished particulars I did not know. Certain things I was too young to remember about that particular day, but many others of other later days of the same character I do remember. These recollections are here presented in the hope that they may afford an interesting glimpse of the history of half a century ago.

The idea of getting up a Fourth of July celebration at Prospect that would surpass anything of the kind ever held in the country previous to that time, originated with Doctor Ford S. Dodds, who was then reading medicine with the elder Doctor Lusk, in Harmony, Pa. It was he who secured the attendance of the military companies from all parts of the county, engaged the bands of musicians, selected the public speakers, prepared the programme, in short directed the celebration along all lines. Doctor Dodds, the promoter of that far-away, red-letter celebration, is still living, hale and hearty, at Anna, in southern Illinois.

I shall now quote what my fiend has said about that celebration. "It was known as 'The Big Fourth', because on that day the largest number of people was in Prospect that ever was there up to that time. After that day Prospect appeared on the map. The Centerville Artillery company fired its cannon on the Diamond and broke all the glass in Kirk's windows. Billy Spear and I were together and when the cannon was fired it so scared us that we started out the Butler road to the old Spear farm on the double-quick. Billy suddenly remembered that his mother had told him to run down to their house and watch the bees because they were expected to swarm. So we obeyed his mother and stayed down there until the cannonading in the village was over. I recall that we felt sure the report shook the hill. The earth trembled.

Many miltary companies were assembled there from Butler and sevral from the wstern part of the county.

The speaking took place in Kirkpatrick's grove, where a speaker's stand and seats had been prepared. Dr. D.H.B. Brower delivered an eloquent address of welcome. The chairman was the Hon. Alfred Gilmore. The vice-presidents were your grandfather the Hon. Colonel David Roth, Sr., the Hon. Samuel Marshall, the Hon. John McCandless, John White, Robert Bartley, Abraham Ziegler, and Major Wm. Taylor, of Lawrence county. The secretaries were Joseph L.Breaden and A.E. Marshall. Lewis Z. Mitchell, Esq., read the Declaration of Independence. Doctor Loring Lusk was the orator of the day. Uncle Jake Ziegler made the closing address.

I remember that Jim Spence drove a four-horse wagon back and forth from the village to the grove. It was rigged up so that passengers sat with their backs to each other facing the sides. He called it "The Low Back Car". That name was painted on a strip of muslin that was stretched along the center above the heads of the passengers.

Gingerbread and small beer were furnished by 'Old Winger'. Do you mind him? He was an old German who, on the advice of John A. Dickey, laid in an extra supply of beverages and solid foods and had a boy in front of the restaurant ringing a bell at noon as the militia marched by to the tavern of Jake Phipps. Phipps had a great dinner prepared; the table, two hundred and fifty feet long, was set under a canopy of boughs brought from the woods. Winger's place was on te cornr of the Diamond. As he saw all the people pass by he wrung his hands in despair and sent post-haste for Dickey. When he came, Winger exclaimed, 'Mein Gott, Dickey, for what you break me up? Nobody comes to buy my cakes and beer!'

Dickey started out and with the aid of some friends soon packed Winger's place with hungry and thirsty customers. He was completely sold out long before the sun went down and had more 'fipenny bits' and 'levys' than he had ever seen before; so he said to Dickey: "You make good. Me and my old woman says 'Thanks'."

I remember how Bob Allen rushed up the extension to his tavern, half brick and half gravel, in order to have it ready for that red-letter day. And I remember how I looked at that 'stew-pen-di-ous' structure with boyish awe. Up to that time we hadn't so much to boast about in the way of big buildings, but after that the bars were down for us to brag to our hearts' content about the mammoth hotels of Prospect; and we did it, especially to the Whitestown boys."

Thus far the letter of my good friend, which furnishes quite a substantial foundation for my own recollections of the musters and reviews of the times long gone by.

The day of the muster of the militia being made known long before, was looked forward to with great expectation. The landlords of the two hotels of the village made special preparations and the members of the local company of militia burnished their arms and accoutrements and made ready to show themselves to advantage on dress parade. Expectations far beyond those which animate the minds of the boys nowadays in looking forward to the coming of the Fourth of July, swelled our youthful hearts with patriotic fervor as the eventful day drew near. The drum corps of the village, consisting of two fifes, two snare drums and a big bass drum -- none of your shallow little brass concerns, but a big wooden one, as big as a barrel, so long that it took long arms to hit both ends at the same time --met several evenings previous for special rehearsal, and every lad who could escape the watchful eye of his mother, went with the others to gather round the musicians and to escort them as they marched up and down the village street.

At last the muster day dawned clear and bright. The boys were allowed unusual liberty that day and all were out early, chuck full of suppressed excitement. The militia of the home company, which was called the "Hornets", began to drop in every man in full uniform; the uniform as I recollect it, consisted of a very tight blue coat with long tails and a prodigious quantity of bright brass buttons on it, a high stiff hat with brightly colored feathers, trousers mostly blue, some black, but all with a bright red stripe down the leg, with straps under the boots. Each man wore a white belt, carried a cartridge-box, and was armed with a long smooth-bore flint-lock musket to which was attached a horrible triangular bayonet. The officers were simply gorgeous. The hats they wore had high towering plumes of red and white feathers, their coats had more brass buttons, they had wide epaulettes of golden lace on their shoulders and every man from the captain to the corporals flourished a long, bright, dreadful sword.

"Tention Comp'ny! Fall In!" they roared, and the men formed in line, and then the fifers blew their shrillest notes and waked the slumbering echoes with the strains of "Nancy Dawson," "The Girl I Left Behind Me," "Yankee Doodle," "Hail Columbia," or other well known airs which everybody knew but nobody could indicate to another except by whistling; the snare-drummers stepped off, stiff legged, rattling and rolling as they went; and the fellow with the big bass drum made it fairly thunder as they marched away.

Bye and bye the Portersville boys came on the scene in wagons -- and they had their fun on the way. W.R. Riddle, a drummer in their band relates several incidents of the day. He says, "We left Portersville in three lumber wagons driven by Cyrus Dunlap, John K.Kennedy and William Wallace. Racing began at the U.P. church east of Portersville. Dunlap was ahead with Kennedy second. The race was kept up to within a couple miles of Prospect. Then the boys jumped out of the wagons and the drivers ran a headlong, mad race to Prospect, Dunlap in the lead to the end. The whole company, band, drivers and all, was lined up in front of the Phipp's tavern -- where Riddle's store is now, and a big-bellied bottle, familiarly called "Old Black Bet", was passed, with a glass all along the line, and every man had his nip. The tavern had a double porch in front, the upper floor of which was filled with ladies interested in the scene on the street below. Some wicked fellow threw lighted shootin' crackers surrepticiously among them and then they ran away screaming, while the rascals below laughed.

But soon the company formed, their band struck up its tune, and away they went. Then came the "Bulger Blues", the "Butler-Jacksonians", whom we urchins disrespectfully called the "Butler Jackasses", the artillery from Centerville, the Evansburg Company, a company from Harlansburg in Lawrence county and finally the "Harmony Bears". I suppose I have some things mixed as to the names, but about the "Bears" I surely must be right. As a small boy I was especially terror stricken at sight of these heroes. They were German, their captain was a German and his commands were issued in a mighty German voice in the German language.

"Achtung Gompanie"! he roared, and the terrible fellows, in big bear-skin shakos, two feet high, braced up, looked fierce, and strode away at the word of command.

The general rendezvous was the common, eastward, where the geese pastured and the vagrant cows and pigs of the village summered. There, in their various uniforms, each separate company with its band, each band striving to drown all the others, assembled in grand review. Oh! Where can such a sight be seen on this round earth today?

And there were all the farmers and the farmers' wives from half a score of miles around; and there were the farmers' boys and girls and the loving swains and blushing damoselles; and, most conspicuous of all, the village dudes and dandies, and the dudelettes and dandiettes from their native hamlets foregathered there, arrayed in costumes of the fashions which were once --or may have been -- the vogue in Paris and had been brought to New York and thence transmitted to Pittsburgh, and then to Butler, and finally to the obscre villages and cross-road hamlets whence these rustic beaux and belles came forth and although the fashions had been changed at every station by the way, and years unnumbered had passed by since they were introduced, yet there was not a boy or girl among them who did not feel dressed in the height of fashion and fixed up fit to kill. And why not!

But the soldiers: how their bosoms swelled with martial ardor as they presented arms and carried arms and trailed arms and loaded and took aim and fired by squad, platoon and company and fought sham battles and marched and counter-marched and wheeled and filed right and filed left and executed the most astonishing military evolutions with soldierly precision, perpendicular erectness, and solemn, stern demeanor. Is it wonderful that the small boy was so deeply impressed that fifty years in passing have not dimmed the picture in his mind?

But other scenes and sights and attractions enhanced the glory of that day of wonders. An organ-grinder with a monkey kept a crowd drawn round him into which and out again from time to time we small fry squeezed our way. I do not remember anything of "Old Winger" but the name. But I do remember the old woman who from a little red, one-horse wagon, dealt out ginger-bread and spruce-beer at a penny a quarter section for the cake and a like sum for each glass of beer, and her I shall never forget. She was the queen of my heart! Never shall I forget how cool, how sweet and how delicious was the taste of that spruce-beer. The foam on the top of the glass was even as a crown of glory in my eys and the rich, brown nectar of the depths beneath was to my ravished taste almost divine. The ginger-bread was cut in squares, large indeed for the price, but all too small for me. I never got enough. A penny's worth, although a liberal chunk, made no perceptible impression on my appetite. It simply disappeared and left no trace behind.

But fluids other than spruce-beer and lemonade were circulating there. About every other farmer in those good old days owned a small distillery and every mother's son of them drank rye whiskey. Not one in a dozen of those brave soldiers in the ranks had not a pint flask somewhere in his clothes. Many of them were intoxicated by the unaccustomed excitement of being in a crowd, and when the draughts of rye-juice began to add their exhilerating effects to the natural excitement of the occasion, their patriotism became overwhelming. Discipline broke down. The officers marched them through the village firing and yelling as they went, and at the taverns gave the order to break ranks and stack arms. The musicians blew and hammered away without cessation. When one band was exhausted and paused to wet its whistle, another began and often one could not wait until the other would stop. If a moment of silence occured some officer, or if not an officer, any private in the ranks gave the command, "Music!" and again the din began.

Then the fellows who nursed old grudges or had old scores to settle came together, swore at each other awhile, and finally fell to punching and pounding one another with all their good-will, energy and strength. There was not much science in those fights, no Marquis of Queensbury's rules observed, I suppose, but what was lacking in science was more than made up in loud talking, liquor and endurance. A man might as well be kicked by a mule as to stand up before a fair blow from the fist of one of those sturdy woodsmen, ploughmen or coal miners. Several families with the reputation of bullies, as well as individual bruisers, were expected to come to the front on those eventful days. There were the Biddles and the Dusenberrys and the Bosemans and the Hiners and the Wisers (of course these are not their names much as they sound like them), who came in squads, a half-dozen big, hard-fisted, square shouldered brothers, always aching for a fight and probably aching after they had it. How often we have seen them, one or another, led through the streets by some boon companion in arms, both half seas over, the champion bleeding at the nose and black about the eyes, punished effectually, consoling himself with how much worse off the other fellow was, and still thirsting for gore. Oh, those were rare old days.

And we boys either ran terrified when the fight began or circled round the edges of the crowd and yelled when the rest yelled and afterward bragged of the prowess of our faorite pugilist when the noise of the conflict was over. And that night, when the din was done, when the quiet village resumed its normal peaceful calm, I went to sleep and dreamed of war and ginger-bread, red feathers, marching armies, spruce-beer and monkeys until exhausted nature could endure no more.

THE OLD HOME WEEK BOOK
History of the Village of Prospect, PA

Transcribed and Donated by Robert A. Stumpf

Chapter IX

The Robin's Nest

The recollections of the older inhabitants, if gathered in writing, form an interesting chronicle of events of the past. While the writer was encamped with his boy companions in the big woods back of the Mile Run School House, one of them wrote a letter home and then asked how he should have the expected answer to his letter addressed. The answer was "The Still Spring Camp, R.F.D. 44, Prospect, Pa." That settled the name of the camp of 1904, and thereby hangs a tale which unfolds some history.

Long, long ago almost one hundred years ago, before the days of local option, internal revenue or other sumptuary laws and taxes, when men were fewer and freer in the land than now, when it was easier and more profitable to transport the distilled product of corn and rye than to transport the corn and rye in their natural state, somebody established a distillery by the big spring which gushes from the base of the rocky ledge where the camp was pitched. Here whiskey was made in the long years ago. If it were in existence now no doubt it would be for medicinal purposes, worth almost its weight in gold. If sumptuary laws were to be made a blessing to the country with respect to whiskey, one should be enacted which would prevent any generation from consuming that which itself produced and limit it to the use of that which former generations had distilled. If such a law had been in operation when the site of this camp was the scene of activity at the beginning of the last century, what a store of wholesome, palatable and precious spiritus frumenti would be somewhere on earth today. How mellow with age! How crowned with the bead of many years! What a body therunto! What an aroma! How lubricating for a cold and precious for medicinal purposes! Here in the all-surrounding forest, with pure water gushing from Nature's reservoir in copious and never failing abundance, where the paths winding under the tall trees, from every direction, all converged, the white man's fire-water was produced. The old paths leading to the spot are still discernable. The sylvan glade was doubtless well-known and frequently visited. Our forefathers had not the same views regarding whiskey that most of their descendants entertain. Their rugged out-door life, their toilsome labors, the wet and cold and heat and rough usage they encountered, the poisonous water they often drank unwittingly from contaminated sources, conspired to make them lenient toward the use -- in moderation -- of that beverage which at the last, if misused, "biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder."

The writer, after pitching camp by the Still Spring, made a fiendly call on an old acquaintance in the neighborhood. The old gentleman, a picture of venerable contentment, sat on his porch with his long, muzzle-loading squirrel rifle standing beside him, bullet-pouch and powder-horn hanging on it, watching for a woodchuck in his meadow. Several long fishing-rods stood handy and he had a wire net of his own construction spread in the creek below. The old mill, which earned his living in its former days, still stands, rheumatic and down at the corners.

"How are you, Uncle John?"

"Oh, I'm all right only a little troubled with the rheumatism in my legs. But I'm gittin' rid of it. I've got a new cure from a doctor in Chicago that's curin' it."

He looked the picture of health, portly, florid, with a long snow-white beard, shaven over the middle of the upper lip and half down the chin -- for convenience -- and long white hair in abundance. He was past eighty.

"That will b a fine thing. if you can get medicine to cure you."

"Yes. It's doin' it. It's all drew out of my body and only a little left in my knees, and the doctor says he has never found a man yet that he couldn't cure of rheumatism."

"That's good. Many people have it. What is the medicine like? How is it put up?"

"In tablets, and discus that I wear on my feet."

"What does he charge you?"

"His regular charge is five dollars, but bein' it was me and I was the first one in this neighborhood to take his medicine, he said he would let me have it for three dollars and seventy-five cents; so I sent him four. An' are you out campin'?"

"Yes, but it does not go very well. It's too wet."

"It is an uncommon wet Summer. Are you camping at the old place?"

"No."

"Eh! Be-ent ye? Where are ye campin'?"

"At the big spring on the old Hays farm, where the old still house used to be."

"The Robin's Nest. Oh yes! I know the place, the 'Ronin's Nest' we called it. I helped old Jake make more than one run there."

"That was long ago, of course."

"YEs, long before the war an' endurin' the war."

"Was there a still house there before Hays came?"

"Yes, ever since I can remember. I don't know who put it there."

Then the old gentleman became reminiscent and he had a long time to go back, between eighty and ninety years, and always had a liking for his grog. But he takes nothing now stronger than coffee,and if he continues to do so perhaps the new medicine may cure him of his rheumatism before he dies of old age.

Taking up his narrative he continued: "Then old Jake left here and went to Pittsburg and then he come back in the war-time. Before that there was no revenue laws and whoever wanted to make whiskey made it. And when he come back he wanted to make some but the place got run-down and he couldn't. So he got at me to fix up his troughs and mash-tubs and so on, an' bein' I had no water here to saw, I went, with the understanding between him and me that whatever I wanted, or needed, I was to git. We made some fine runs, whenever we could git the chop, for the mash. We done it off an' on but he didn't make a business of it. Then I quit an' he got another feller to help him an' he got to blowin' round about the big wages he was makin'. I guess he was workin' for the half -- at any rate they run it on the shares, for the other feller was sellin' it. He sold a barl at the Stone House. An' so it got out that they were makin' it and got talked around.

Then old Jake got a present of two hundred bushel of rye from Jake Parker -- he married old Jake's daughter, and was his son-in-law -- an' bein' he didn't just know what to do with the rye, you see, he got me to come over an' help him run it. We run off between fifty and sixty gallon, a good barl, for Parker, and we run it twice. It was away above proof, an' sent it to him. I reckon there's some of that liquor about Pittsburg yit an' if there is, I tell you now, it' fine, I bet. We run it all off an' then we made some cherry bounce. McAboy was revenue collector than an' he come out an' hunted 'round an' he went to old Jake's an' stopped with him. He pretended to be from away off, up north somewhere, an' let on he was sick an' he asked the old man to give him something. So Jake give him a drink of the cherry bounce an' he pretended to be awfully pleased with it an' said it was such a good drink. An' it was good. An' he said he would just like to git half a barl of that to take up north. Jake didn't know him or where he was from an' so he sold him half a barl. An' then, you see, he had him. The next thing Jake knowed the Old Man (sheriff) come out fom Butler after him an' took him. An' that was a dirty, mean trick of McAboy. Jake's son-in-law he had a piece of land he sold and helped him an' got him off an' he didn't have to pay the penalty of the law. But he didn't make any more at the old still where you are campin', for they come an' took his still."

"Well, I must go, Uncle John, Good-bye."

"Come out an' see me agin while you're in the neighborhood."

"All right. I will. Good-bye."

The Jacob Hays referred to was of the family and closely related to that Rutherford B. Hays who was declared President of the United States. What the relationship may have been we have not been at any pains to discover. The men who were boys in Prospect fifty years ago will remember him with his patriarchal beard riding into the village on his tall white horse "Rodney". As a supplement to the foregoing narrative, one of the recollections of the writer's boyhood will be in order. On the eastern side of the Hays farm, a building may be seen which Jacob Hays erected after the old distillery was confiscated, to be used for the same purpose. Perhaps he thought it profitable to make whiskey in a legitimate way, even after his hard experience in dong it unlawfully. But although the building was erected and equipped for that purpose, very little whiskey was ever made in it, unless, occasionally, on the sly, for his own use and for a few of his acquaintances.

Near the opening of the war, the writer, then a boy, was driving with his father along the road from which the roof could be seen. Smoke was pouring from the chimney of the untenanted house.

"Father,he exclaimed, "there is smoke coming out of the chimney of the distillery."

"I will not look at it," said his father, looking the other direction.

And after they were out of sight of it he said, "I might be called to serve on the Grand Jury and then it would be my duty, under oath, to report any unlawful doings I knew of in the county, and that is why I would not look. I do not wish to become a spy and informer on my neighbors."

And thus ends this story of the moonshine distillery where the camp was pitched by the Old Still Spring.