St. Nicholas/Volume 32/Number 3/Pocket-book
A Strange Pocket-book
Sarah Caldwell, was a little girl thirteen years old, when, toward the close of the Civil War, she had a perilous drive, and yet one which I am sure any of you boys and girls would envy her. One night, after she had prepared her lessons for the next day and had little thought of any adventure it might held in store for her, her father asked, “Well, little woman, how would you like to drive with me to-morrow to Louisville?”
Now, Louisville was thirty miles from the little Kentucky town in which they lived, and there was at that time no railroad between the two places. The drive was one full of danger, Sarah knew, for the guerrillas, a desperate band of plunderers and highwaymen, who did so much harm during the war, were constantly waylaying travelers, robbing banks, and raiding the little towns. So when her father proposed the drive her feelings were a mixture of surprise, doubt, and delight. Our. little heroine was always ready for adventure; and having the greatest confidence in her father’s ability to defend her, if necessary, she seized the chance to go to the city with him. She cared not to know his errand, but felt instinctively that it was an important one, for he was a busy lawyer, a judge, and president of the bank of their town.
So, unquestioningly, Sarah prepared that night to start early the next morning. She noticed her mother was unusually busy sewing on the dress she was to wear, although she knew of no stitches neccessary to be made on it. Yet she did not wonder, but with childish confidence went to bed, radiant and expectant of the coming day’s pleasure. You children who travel so frequently these days, in which trains run everywhere at all times, cannot appreciate the keen delight of a boy or girl forty years ago, whose trips from home were red-letter days.
The next morning found Sarah up for an early start. It was late spring and the day a glorious one. The drive lay over the “State Pike,” and led past grassy fields and woods full of great beech and oak trees, whose tender green leaves were peeping forth. The country is so exquisitely rolling that often at the top of a gently sloping but high hill a great panoramaof beauty lay before them. Along the roadside ran gray stone fences, and now and then a tiny chipmunk would bob up from a crevice between the stones and, scurrying along, disappear as if by magic. The noisy blue jays were discordantly crying in the trees, and the busy woodpeckers industriously hammering, while from lime to time a gorgeous redbird would fly by, and all the birds seemed inspired by the splendor of the morning to sing their sweetest.
Watching eagerly all this, and unheeding any danger that might lie in their way, our trayelers reached Boston Tavern, midway between their town and Louisville. It still stands at the foot of Boston Hill, and is a long, low, rambling structure, closely resembling the inns of old England. There excitement reigned. The stage-coach stood at the door, and its passengers were telling of an attack made on them a few miles back by a band of guerrillas who had stolen their money, watches, and the mail carried by the coach. Here Sarah’s courage wavered, for she had heard so much of these terrible men. But on her father’s reassuring her that they would be too busy escaping after this robbery to molest them, she was eager to start again. He must have felt
“He began to rip the skirt from its lining.”
And nothing did harm them, although along the path through a big woods lay mail strewn by the escaping guerrillas,
They reached Louisville in safety. In spite of the fact that they were to be there but for the day, Sarah’s father took her to a hotel. On reaching their room, he gravely told her to take off her dress; and not being accustomed to questioning him, she wonderingly obeyed. Reaching out his hand for the dress and opening his knife, he began to rip the skirt from its lining; and to our little lady’s astonished eves appeared bank-note after bank-note, amounting to thousands of dollars. Her mother had carefully sewed them in her skirt the night before, that the money which her father had to take from his bank for deposit in the city might be carried in safety from the guerrillas.
This was the end of an adventure, but the very beginning of a romance; for that day Sarah met the young man whom in after years she married; and the long drive, which might very easily have proved so disastrous to her, was in the end worth a good husband and many years of happiness,