Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains | Page 3

of the art of fiction and but little of any sort of literature; having been brought up in the severe school of nature, which is all truth, and having had as instructor in my calling a man who was singularly and famously truthful, truth has been my inheritance and in this book I bequeath it to my readers.
My name is William F. Drannan, and I was born on the Atlantic ocean January 30, 1832, while my parents were emigrating from France to the United States.
They settled in Tennessee, near Nashville, and lived upon a farm until I was about four years old. An epidemic of cholera prevailed in that region for some months during that time and my parents died of the dread disease, leaving myself and a little sister, seven months old, orphans.
I have never known what became of my sister, nor do I know how I came to fall into the hands of a man named Drake, having been too young at that time to remember now the causes of happenings then. However, I remained with this man, Drake, on his plantation near The Hermitage, the home of Gen. Andrew Jackson, until I was fifteen.
Drake was a bachelor who owned a large number of negro slaves, and I was brought up to the age mentioned among the negro children of the place, without schooling, but cuffed and knocked about more like a worthless puppy than as if I were a human child. I never saw the inside of a school-house, nor was I taught at home anything of value. Drake never even undertook to teach me the difference between good and evil, and my only associates were the little negro boys that belonged to Drake, or the neighbors. The only person who offered to control or correct me was an old negro woman, who so far from being the revered and beloved "Black Mammy," remembered with deep affection by many southern men and women, was simply a hideous black tyrant. She abused me shamefully, and I was punished by her not only for my own performances that displeased her, but for all the meanness done by the negro boys under her jurisdiction.
Naturally these negro boys quickly learned that they could escape punishment by falsely imputing to me all of their mischief and I was their scape-goat.
Often Drake's negro boys went over to General Jackson's plantation to play with the negro boys over there and I frequently accompanied them. One day the old General asked me why I did not go to school. But I could not tell him. I did not know why. I have known since that I was not told to go and anyone knows that a boy just growing up loose, as I was, is not likely to go to school of his own accord.
I do not propose to convey to the reader the idea that I was naturally better than other boys, on the contrary, I frequently deserved the rod when I did not get it, but more frequently received a cruel drubbing when I did not deserve it, that, too, at the hands of the old negro crone who was exceedingly violent as well as unjust. This, of course, cultivated in me a hatred against the vile creature which was little short of murderous.
However, I stayed on and bore up under my troubles as there was nothing else to do, so far as I knew then, but "grin and bear it." This until I was fifteen years old.
At this time, however ignorant, illiterate, wild as I was, a faint idea of the need of education dawned upon me. I saw other white boys going to school; I saw the difference between them and myself that education was rapidly making and I realized that I was growing up as ignorant and uncultured as the slave boys who were my only attainable companions.
Somehow I had heard of a great city called St. Louis, and little by little the determination grew upon me to reach that wonderful place in some way.
I got a few odd jobs of work, now and then, from the neighbors and in a little while I had accumulated four dollars, which seemed a great deal of money to me, and I thought I would buy about half of St. Louis, if I could only get there. And yet I decided that it would be just as well to have a few more dollars and would not leave my present home, which, bad it was, was the only one I had, until I had acquired a little more money. But coming home from work one evening I found the old negress in an unusually bad humor, even for her. She gave me a cruel thrashing just to give vent to her feelings, and