164 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

depredators and was discontinued on that account. Besides
these watchmen, occasionally, when diabolism was specially
prevalent, and always on Saturday night, perhaps, citizen patrol-

men walked the streets until a late hour, sometimes during the
entire night. The town bell rang at nine o’clock p. m. as a
signal when the negroes were to be out of the street, unless by
special and definite permission of their owners. The same bell
regulated the hours for breakfast and dinner, and one hour after
the call to these in each case, the “turn out bell” gave the call
from refreshment to labor.

Every doctor compounded his own prescriptions in those days
and physicians’ offices were simply drug stores, minus the patent
medicines and perfumery and fancy articles which druggists
keep in stock. The doctor usually charged for his service to a
family a round sum by the year, and made his visits on horse-
back, with his saddlebags containing medicine and invariable

accompaniments ; and his lancet, let us not forget, for phlebot-
omy was the universal practice. SENEX, JR
, JR.

a,

An esteemed friend, fully and accurately informed, suggests
correction of the writer’s surmise that the “Horse Pond,” corner

of Front and Mulberry Streets, was artificially formed, as was
suggested in the former article, and says that it existed previous

to 1812; and further that boys of seventy or eighty years ago
were wont to swim in its waters.

A buggy was hardly known a few decades ago. The rich trav-

eled in closed carriages, very much lighter, but in appearance

very similar to stages. They were costly, and those in moderate
circumstances contented themselves with horseback riding. This

was = mode of travel generally for both sexes on journeys or
in church attendance, but two-wheeled vehicles, drawn by one

horse, were sometimes called j ee :
nto requisition; the gig fo
persons and the sulky for one. : —

How changed school discipline and training of the schools
within the past sixty years or so! Even good old “Miss” (Mrs. )
“Coxetter” used the birchen rod, and Miss Maggie McLeod he
lingered with us almost until now, and Miss Laura Rankin knew

well its virtue and spared not to apply. In the Old Academy
days, before our time, the older citizens hesitated not to tell,

i) SRG Ni ie ite ETO Tk TE Peak ce ay eee a eR: Tae ee ;
Be RE Ne De oS PN eG Be La aa aA re

eee

 

Early Years 165

almost with clenched teeth, how “Old Mitchell” wielded the rod
in a way that would not have disgraced a Comanche. But Jesse
Mulock was bad enough. “Old Mulock”—for to schoolboys
teachers are all old—was a man of powerful grip, and when he
kept over the Hewlett bar, on Front Street, where Craft’s furni-
ture store now stands, or later in the room over French’s shoe
store, where Sol. Bear’s store is now located—in either place he
had a room above that in which the idea was taught to shoot, a
room to which unruly youth were transported to undergo the
horrors of the hickory. We hear little now of chinquapin or
birch or hickory. “The fair, delightful plans of peace” prevail
in the schoolrooms of today and do perhaps as well. But this
must be allowed: if the youths of olden time learned less they
learned it thoroughly. They lost in extent and variety, but did
they not gain in solidity? In 1840 one went to school eleven
months of the year, barring Saturday and Fourth of July and
Christmas, perhaps, and with Mr. Mulock even Saturday was

liable to be appropriated to map-inspection, or a lecture on
astronomy—a sort of dessert to the intellectual feasts of the

other five days.

Daguerre discovered the art of retaining impressions upon
chemically prepared plates in 1839, and of course daguerreo-
typing was not practically known in Wilmington in 1840. On
the mantelpieces of almost every home were silhouettes ; that is,
profiles cut out of paper or cardboard with more or less neatness
and laid on a black surface. These silhouettes were usually
very accurate likenesses, so far as a side view could be such. The
portraits painted for those who could afford them were some-
times far otherwise. In the early days of the forties traveling
on land was mostly by private conveyance. The four-horse stage-
coach carried mails and passengers on special routes where not
superseded by the few railroads then in existence. The stage
carried one from place to place at a cost of, say 10 cents a mile,
at the rate of six miles an hour, without extra charge for the
bumpings and thumpings experienced. In 1845 one might go
from Wilmington to New York in seventy hours, stopping at
each railroad terminus to change cars and recheck (or remark)
baggage. Postages previous to 1845 were 1214 cents for a single
sheet of paper and 25 cents for a double sheet. AII papers were
folded and sealed with wafers or sealing wax. Postpaid en-
velopes were in use in Paris in the seventeenth century and the
Sardinian States used them in 1818. Stamps were introduced