MUSTANG GRAY; A ROMANCE.
BYTHE HON. JEREMIAH CLEMENS,
AUTHOR OF "BERNARD LILE."PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1858.Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Dedication
TO NICHOLAS DAVIS, ESQ.,
HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA.
MY DEAR NICK:—IN the Army, and in civil life—as an officer under my command in time of war,—and as an unwavering friend through all the less manly and more bitter struggles of parties and of politics in time of peace, you have acquired many claims to my regard. But it is not these alone that move me to write your name on the first page of this volume. The last words your Mother was ever heard to speak, were words of warm regard for me; and to the hour of his death, your Father honored me with a friendship which is among my proudest recollections. In the whole range of my acquaintance, I have never known two persons more remarkable for unswerving integrity of thought and action, or more distinguished for a lofty scorn of all that was low or vile in humanity. In dedicating this book to one of their descendants, I discharge a duty to the dead; at the same time, I mark my appreciation of the many virtues and manly qualities of the living.
JERE CLEMENS.
PREFACE.
IN selecting for the Hero of my story a real character whose name and exploits are so well known in the South-West I was not unaware of the difficulties that surrounded the under taking. I knew that fiction must in a great measure give place to fact, and that imagination would be inconveniently restricted in its flight. In such a work, the interest to be derived from a sustained and complicated plot is almost entirely lost, and if I had written for money alone, or even for reputation, my choice would have been different. But as the last of these did not weigh with me unduly, and the first not at all, I selected a Hero, whose actual history seemed to me best calculated to enforce the lesson it was my object to inculcate.
The leading object of "Bernard Lile," was to show that no strength of will, no genius, no gifts of fortune, and no accomplishments, are sufficient of themselves to save us from the greatest errors in our journey through the world.
In "Mustang Gray," this idea is carried still farther, and I have endeavored to show that no associations, no natural gentleness of disposition, and no pious training in early life, page: vi-vii[View Page vi-vii] will suffice to prevent us from yielding to the temptations of passion.
The moral of both is, that at all times, and under all circumstances, we are weak and helpless against the evil tendency of our own inclinations, if unaided by the protecting presence of a merciful God.
In both, I have sought to impress on the mind of the reader, the one great truth, that the only way to escape from Hell, is to keep our eyes forever fixed on Heaven.
I have made no attempt to paint one of those immaculate characters without which, a Novel is generally considered a failure by the sentimental reader. I have written of men and women as I know them to be—a mixture of good and evil, the best of whom are liable to err.
I have tried also to avoid that popular theory of Novelists, false as it is popular, that virtue is always rewarded, and vice is always punished here below. Some virtues and some vices carry their own rewards or punishments along with them; but in the experience of life, we do not find the lightning descending especially upon the dwellings of the wicked, nor do we hear of Angels dispatched with bags of gold to reward every good deed a mortal may perform. The ravens fed Elijah, but many a good man has starved in the streets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and found no raven to succor him.
The theory is not only false, it is full of danger to the voung. It weakens exertion, destroys self-watchfulness, and, worst of all, saps the foundations of the Christian's creed, by teaching us to look for judgments here, instead of hereafter.
There are hundreds now living, who will attest that the portrait I have drawn is true to the original. His adventures might have been swelled to a volume of treble the present size, and yet much have been left untold. I have confined myself to such only as I considered necessary to the development of his character.
The geographical and historical parts of the work, are as accurate as memory, after the lapse of busy years, would allow me to make them. Of its other features I have nothing to say. If the book altogether pleases the critics, very well—if it does not, still it is very well. I have long since learned to bear both praise and censure, even from the virtuous and enlightened, with as much indifference as is consistent with a just pride of character. When either comes from other sources, it is seldom read, and never remembered.
THE AUTHOR.
