a d——d (feeling the pressure of the soft little hand, he felt admonished to skip the hard words, and hesitating a little, said), “I was such a fool that I didn’t know it!” The above incident was related to me by a man who was a member of the Legislature, was present and heard the speech, and was acquainted with all the parties, and it is mentioned here to show that men were sometimes Democrats who had none of the copperhead virus in them. Of this class was one of the principal actors in the sketch which follows:
I was stopping over night in the village of Attica, Wyoming Co., N. Y., and while transacting business in the town I chanced to meet Col. Charles 0. Shepard, a very popular member of the State Senate, an active member of the liberty party, and one of the original stockholders in this institution. Mr. Shepard invited me to take breakfast with him, saying that he had something he would like to show me. X accepted the invitation, and after breakfast he showed me an U. G. R. R. car, in which two fugitives had come all the way from Washington, D. C. It was a box, made of light boards, to fit into a gardener’s market wagon; the forepart formed a seat, and the back part was high, so that a person could sit on the bottom, extending the feet forward under the driver’s seat. In this box a woman and her daughter had, a few days before, arrived at his house from Washington without change of horses or driver.
Some 22 years since, several farmers in Onondaga Co., having some money to invest, went to the District of Columbia and to counties in Virginia near Washington, and bought old, worn out farms at from $5 to $15 per acre, and by the use of fertilizers and the application of their northern system of farming, they brought them into profitable cultivation. Three or four of these men were my school-mates when we were boys. They bought
