Captain W. W. Withenbury's 1838–1842 "Red River Reminiscences"

32. A Practical Joke: Part 1

226  Red River Reminiscences 32  A Practical Joke: Part 1 • While at Pine Prairie, Withenbury was reminded of a practical joke that was perpetrated a few years before on an unnamed traveler by Tom Scott (the son of Judge Robert H. Scott), his wife Betty (Elizabeth), and his friend Andy Armstrong. Thomas W. Scott was state senator from Sevier County from 1840–1843 according to the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas. Andrew Armstrong was a planter in the White Oak Shoals area and served as state senator from 1848–1849 and in the lower house from 1842–1843 according to the Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Southern Arkansas. The incident takes place at Tom Scott’s Pine Prairie plantation home, which was next door to his father’s house, but apparently on his father’s property, because Tom Scott was a planter but not an independent property owner.1  T aking up my pen again, after a long interval of silence , I am reminded that in my last I had only reached Pine Prairie, Arkansas, where I introduced, by name only, “Colonel” Tom Scott, one of the early legislators of the then frontier State on the southwestern boundary of this “great and galorious Union of ours.” Some few years prior to the time of which I am writing, there traveled a stranger through the northern portion of Louisiana and Western “Arkansaw,” whose special mission was to drum up re- The Reminiscences  227 liable customers for various commercial establishments in New York; and I suppose that in introducing him I ought to give his name, in order that the great and indispensable army of “commercial travelers” of this day may recognize and do proper homage to this pioneer in a calling then in its infancy, but which, by the indomitable perseverance of the Yankee, has since grown to very respectable proportions. But as I purpose in this chapter to speak of a resident citizen of Arkansas, I will omit the name of the “New York drummer,” contenting myself with the bare incidental introduction I have given him, and refer to him as I proceed only where it is necessary to do so in order to illustrate more clearly than I could otherwise do, the eccentricities of my hero “Colonel” Tom Scott. I must state, however, that in addition to the ordinary duties of a “drummer” our traveler had bethought himself of the favorable opportunity thus offered for writing a book, relying entirely upon the varied incidents of his journeyings, and the many different phases of human nature which should present themselves as he went from place to place seeking new acquaintances and fresh customers for his employers. The first I heard of him he was among a jolly set of fellows at the thriving town of Washington, in Hempstead County, Arkansas; and if my readers only knew as well as “Uncle Joe” and I do, a few of the frolicsome spirits of those early days, they would not need be told in detail of the way this stranger was “taken in and done for” by that grand, old fun-loving Israelite, Abraham Block, his precocious son “Gus,” Mat. Moss, the Hempstead County fiddler , Bill Andrews, the “liveliest Yankee” merchant ever known in Arkansas, (unless I except “Dan.” Fellows, of Camden,2 ) and “Hal” Cheatham, who kept the tavern,3 (where “Lev.” Cooper administered the beverages and chalked down the drinks, in his youthful days, and before he became the infallible Red River 228  Red River Reminiscences Steamboat Inspector and Dictator for the New Orleans Board of Underwriters.) But it is of no use to go any further with this list of hospitable entertainers, for it seems to me endless, and I find myself led into digressions which possibly are unwarrantable in this connection, and so I leave my readers to judge whether a stranger alighting in the midst of a little isolated community, made up largely of shrewd business men, who were in the habit of making annual pilgrimages to the great centers of trade for fresh supplies of merchandise, and where, also, they were sure to gather up all the new jokes and tricks of the metropolis, which in the leisure intervals between their business hours, they would practice upon each other, provided no stranger or “outsider” came along—I say I will leave my readers to judge whether the aforesaid “outsider” would or would not...