Legends and Memories of St John's Chapel -
Addressed to R. A. Riddick
by Major John W. Moore 

Part IX - published in the Windsor Ledger Aug 17, 1899

Away back in the thirties
Friend Bob, long before your time,
When the Whigs were fighting Jackson
And when Clay was in his prime,
We used to go to the Chapel
And there watch the preacher stand
Beneath the ancient, sounding board
Not in surplice or with band,
For men of other creeds supplied
The pulpit since the rector died.

Then the house to ruin went,
And all souls were made a'feared
Within its wall to venture;
So no longer there was heard
The truth of God, and close beside
Wild orgies sometimes shamed the night
From out a store that stood hard by,
For at times the mornings light
Dispersed a bacchanalian rout
That had tippled the whole night out.

And the village too, neighbor,
Kept on shrinking with the years
When I first knew it well, Sir,
Just about the time when fears
Filled the foolish minds of many
Concerning the final end---
All things earthly, soon should perish;
Such a message did he send;
One Miller, who ventured to say
We soon should see the judgment day.

It so happened by mere chance,
Just about that very time,
That a prodigious falling
Of meters from heights sublime
Fell upon the startled people,
And great numbers felt assured
That the day of final judgment
Had come, and they thus endured
All the feelings that will be ours
When we shall see earth's closing hours.

Did you ever know, neighbor,
Dorsey Pruden in his prime?
Or small Crawford Lassiter?
Staunch Whigs in the olden time,
But I and mine were Democrats;
And nigh everybody else
Who used to meet at Old St Johns
Where some waited curfew bells;
Ah ancient tipplers rest in peace
Your likes now never see the place.

There  was still another wight
Whose brass buttons no more shine,
Who was a thing of wonder
To those childish eyes of mine,
For in his coat of blue broad cloth
He was always decked when e'er
From his little home he wandered;
It was so for many a year
God rest him in that collar high
That towered up toward the sky.

He was a man of such port
As awed the small boys greatly,
His big black eyes could look so
Each youngster 'round was ready
For a retreat from one so grim;
But laughed with his gay brother,
For Jimmy Rawles had not the soul
The smallest boy to bother;
Poor old Josiah, his magesty,
From earthly courts long since did flee.

It mattered not that fashions
Change with ever changing years
Josiah was sure to wear it,
The coat some of his forbears
Wore perhaps in the ages past;
Perchance 'twas his wedding coat,
Howe'er it was for years before,
Did its long tails gaily float
On the air as he walked proudly
In his shoes that cracked so loudly.

Then there was Doctor Tarpley,
Down by Cutta Wiskie Swamp,
Where the owls held carnival
And the nights were dark and damp;
Alas for him and his stick gig,
His dire lancet and his pills,
He has vanished like his practice;
But the agues and the chills
That proved too strong for all his power
Still are laying too many lower.
     
It was like a death warrant,
Often then to have a chill
Four score out of a hundred,
Oft fell victims to the ill,
For the blessed bark of Peru
Had not shown the doctors how
To fight the demon of the Swamp
Which then laid so many low;
Not even the yellow death we know
Can scourge the land and blast it so.

I must not forget a friend
Whom my father valued high,
Old Mr. Samuel Maggett,
A good neighbor living nigh;
They were chums in countless fox hunts
And were brothers in the church,
And host of the manly virtues
On his hoary head did perch
I still can see him calm and still
Till time should come for him to yell.

I can see them yet as morning
Just begins to paint the East
With a score of hounds around
Riding each a gallant beast,
With clamor great of hound and horn
Seeming specters in the mist
Down the road and soon lost to sight
They join others at their tryst;
Ah, far off scenes of childhood's dawn
When life seemed radiant as the morn.

Ah who can tell how gladly
Rode my brother Jim and I,
Along there with the huntsmen
Then our first fox chase to try;
How eager as the trail grew warm
Followed, by the wild hurrah
Which shook the air when reynard burst
Like a rocket from his lair;
With whip and spur we followed well
While hound and hunter jointly yell. 
  
What a placid pair of friends
Were these gentlemen of old,
They had been boys together
And yet never grew they cold;
In the bond so early fashioned
Thus as years crept slowly by
They grew closer to each other,
Even when they came to die
They were like Saul and Jonathan,
These pure and modest gentlemen.

Alas now they both are gone
Sleeping in ancestral soil,
Every weary task is done
Rest they from all grief and toil;
But in neither ancient mansion
Are descendants of their own
And I fear that desolation
There will rear its dreary throne;
No children's voices fill the hall
But brooding silence spreads her pall.

I knew another mansion
In a meadow fair and wide,
Where one hundred years ago
Wealthy people did reside;
I've watched its lofty walls of brick
From the road a mile away,
And wondered oft what kinds of folks
Were living there in their day;
But they have left but empty names
Now no one praises them or blames.

The chimneys rise gaunt and high
Over roof and couvice gone,
The porches have fallen down
And the night winds sigh and moan.
Across the halls and chambers wide
Where gay hearts once were beating,
But now not e'er a starving rat
Is heard behind the sheathing;
And so it is our proudest homes
With years and changes become but tombs.

'Tis thus  I'm pained to see it,
My old home I love so still,
Pained to watch its slow decay
And know empty silence fills
The halls where Love and Music dwelt,
And blessed all the country round
With sweetest of amenities
Will there not again be found
Such days as were its dower of old,
With Love and Beauty in its fold.