His mind had been bathed in sleep
and temperance, the two great physicians, and wiped dry, like the feet
of the Prince of sufferers, with women's hairs. Exercise, natural to a
Virginian, awakened his flowing spirits again, and he fancied the air
grew purer as he advanced into the north, though there was hardly any
perceptible change of elevation. The country grew drier, however, as he
turned the head springs of the great cypress swamp--the counterbalance
of the Dismal Swamp of Virginia--receded from the Chesapeake waters, and
approached the tributaries of the Atlantic. At nine o'clock he entered
the court-house cluster of Georgetown, a little place of a few hundred
people, pitched nearly at the centre of the county one generation
before, or about ten years after the independence of the country.
It was a level place of shingle-boarded houses, assembled around a sandy
square, in which were both elm and Italian poplar trees; and a
double-storied wooden court-house was on the farther side, surrounded by
little cabins for the county officers, pitched here and there, and in
the rear was a jail of two stories, with family apartments below, and
the dungeon window, the debtors' room, and a family bedroom above; and
near the jail and court-house stood the whipping-post, like a dismantled
pump, with a pillory floor some feet above the ground.
Young maples, mulberry and tulip trees, and ailanthuses grew bravely to
make shade along the two streets which pierced the square, and the four
streets which were parallel to its sides--pretty lanes being inserted
between, to which the loamy gardens ran; and, as the Judge stopped at
the tavern near the court, he was told it was "returning day," and the
place would soon be filled with constituents assembling to hear how
"she'd gone"--_she_, as the Judge knew well, meaning Sussex County, and
"gone" intimating her decision expressed at the polls.
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