BERNARD LILE; AN Historical Romance, EMBRACING THE PERIODS OF THE TEXAS REVOLUTION AND THE MEXICAN WAR.
PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1856.Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by JEREMIAH CLEMENS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
DEDICATION,
TO GEORGE W. NEAL, HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA.MY DEAR GEORGE,—
I have taken the liberty, without consulting you, of inscribing your name on this page. The play-mate and class-mate of my childhood and boyhood—the zealous and unwavering friend of a manhood which the shadow has darkened as often as the sunshine has gladdened, I should have been untrue to myself if I had failed to mark my appreciation of a friendship so warm and so unselfish.
Between you and me professions of kindness are not needed. We can afford to take each other's good will on trust, unless the experience of more than half a lifetime is valueless; but it may not be ungrateful to your children to know, that others have appreciated the upright manliness, the stainless integrity, the clear judgement, and the untiring energy of a father's character. It is a far higher legacy than any other you may have to bestow, and I would have them cherish it with increasing pride and satisfaction.
JERE. CLEMENS.
PREFACE.
THIS book owes its existence to an accident, which for months prevented me from participating in the more active duties of life. Although a romance in name, imagination has had little to do with its preparation. It records events the most of which will be familiar to many who read it. Most of the characters are drawn from real life. Not a place is described I have not visited. Scarcely a scene is depicted which is not based upon an actual occurrence. It is a book of life—of life not as I wished it, or thought it ought to be, but as I have found it. It has no plan, for human life has none. A thousand unforeseen circumstances are for ever swaying our purposes, and making a mockery of our firmest resolves. It makes no attempt to paint the author's ideal of a perfect man. In all "the busy, bitter scenes" through which I have passed, I have met no such character, and believe not in its existence. There are none of us so free page: x-xi[View Page x-xi] from errors that we can afford, without self-condemnation, to be uncharitable to the sins of others; and I know of no good that can be accomplished by freeing the hero of a romance from the faults incident to humanity.
The reader will find in this volume no approach to the extravagancies of language attributed to the South-West by almanac makers and scribblers, whose knowledge of the country and the people is bounded by a steam-boat excursion down the Mississippi. The South-West has a language of its own; but it in no degree resembles the miserable caricatures with which the country has been flooded. Sometimes whole sentences are uttered not only in the purest English, but in the loftiest strain of eloquence. Then again every line is filled with inaccuracies, but the figures are always striking, and the words chosen best calculated to convey most forcibly the speaker's meaning. Born upon the frontier myself, and passing the most of my life among its rudest scenes, I know the people well, and have sought to preserve their language exactly as it is.
Every man who writes a book, I suppose has a motive; but very few tell it honestly in the preface. Perhaps I shall best escape the suspicion of like disingenuousness by keeping mine a secret; remarking only, that if the American, when he lays it down, feels in his bosom a warmer throb for his country, a higher appreciation of its excellencies, and a more devoted attachment to its institutions, he need not look further for the motive which induced the author to undergo the labor it has cost, or the hope which sustains him in submitting his production to the criticism of the press.
THE AUTHOR.
LIFE.
- How little do we know the secret source,
- From which life's fountain bubbles into day?
- How little can we guide its wandering course,
- As on it flows upon its turbid way?
- We watch it as it rises from the spring,
- And follow for a little way the tide;
- Then doubt and gloom their heavy shadows fling,
- On all that we would wish to know beside.
- Of one thing only can we certain be;
- That care and sorrow never leave the bed,
- That little stream must journey to the sea—
- Still constant when all brighter things have fled.
