TNGenWeb Project/TNGenNet, Inc., (a Tennessee nonprofit public benefit corporation). "The Howard-Smith Collection" Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved. The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville. This file is in text format. Please use your browser's "back" button to return to the previous page. ******************************************************************************** To: C. McKinney Esq., Rogersville From: Hiram Brown, Hawkins County, Tennessee -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sir, I address you without the honor of personal acquaintance, and offer the following statement as both apology and introduction. Tho' a native of N. Carolina, I and my friends have resided for many years in Cherokee, Georgia-I was educated for the legal profession, but a perilous and incurable affection of the heart constrained me to adopt a less exciting avocation. Accordingly, I became a school-teacher, in which capacity I have continued till the present time, with great success. Five months since I started to Philadelphia to purchase needed books, scientific apparatus, etc. I took the route of the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers, designing to return via Baltimore, Washington, and Charleston, but fearing a delay, made in the night by the steamer at Cincinnati, a fellow passenger and joint occupant with me of a stateroom, absconded while I slept, and carried with him my trunk, which contained my clothes, papers, and $400 in specie. I speedily discovered his trail, and after consultation with the Police, followed thereon to Philadelphia. At that city it ceased. I relinquished the chase, and am now en route to Georgia. After having walked from Winchester, and passed last night in an outhouse, I have arrived here bronzed and swollen in face by sun and wind, "bearded like pard," suffering from hunger and literally penniless. As I have fasted involuntarily for 24 hours, I could relish an Esquimaux banquet of seal's flesh and whale oil, or even assent to the heterodox sentiment mockingly affirmed by Persius in "Quae tibi summa boni est? Uncta vixisse patella, semper." Two hundred and fifty miles yet intervene between me and home, a distance too formidable to be overcome by a pedestrian whose pockets and stomach are "aching voids." But what am I to do? The implements of manual labor, as means of earning funds, would be as inefficient in my hands as the weapons of Ajax Telamon in those of a barber, or Blackstone on the toilet table of a fashionable belle, partly because I am unaccustomed to wield them, but chiefly because the unwonted physical excitement their use must occasion would bring upon me fierce paroxysms of Palpitation, liability to which deprives me of the advantages of otherwise good health. How then can I act? Nightly mendicity might possibly secure me nightly entertainment, but it would involve continual humiliation, and might fail of success. For our lucre-loving age, mistaking suspicion for wisdom, believes that "Omnis homo mendax," at least if he urge ill-fortune as a claim to kindness. Moreover, hospitality, save as a commodity of trade, has become "an obsolete idea"-a grotesque Gothic vagary. Applications for it metamorphose hearers' faces into notes of interrogation or interjection-points of doubt, and cause mouths to open as wide as turnpike gates to emit captious catechisms. Hunger is preferable to this constantly recurring interlocutory torture and sickening distrust. Such is my situation. I am prostrate. But I hope soon to rebound, like the mythological giant, with augmented strength from this contact with mother earth. Still, without whining, which I abhor, my present difficulties are exquisitely painful: "Nil habet infelix paupertas dremisin se quam quod ridiculos homines facit." And this is the case whether this poverty be fortuitous and temporary, or merited and permanent. Besides, education imparts a sensitiveness in such matters which many cannot comprehend. You, however, a member of the most intellectual and influential of professions, will appreciate my feelings. Can not you aid me? With five dollars I could reach home. By loaning me that sum, or part thereof, you would confer infinite benefit, while you should be re-imbursed within 15 days, as I possess property, tho' it is, for the moment, inaccessible. Perhaps I ought to have written home from Philadelphia for a remittance to have saved me from the exigency in which I find myself, but my friends reside in a secluded settlement, 5 miles from their Post Office, which is visited by the Mail only once a week. Hence it was dubious when they would obtain my epistle. Moreover, I hoped by the sale of certain property which I carried about me, to have raised resources adequate to the expenses of my journey. This expectation has been defeated by purchasers, who, with most magnanimous benignity, availed themselves of my necessities to extort "good bargains." I must ask your response in a few minutes, and should be proud to receive permission to elaborate and explain verbally this incomplete communication, whose deficiencies you will please excuse, as it is written with the ghost of a pen on mutilated paper, in great haste, by Your obedient Servant Hiram Brown Hawkins Co., Tenn., Feb. 14, 1848.