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In Old Kentucky 53
and "I go back home wid a pocket full of tin." As for the "Camptown race-track five miles long" on which the bob-tail nag wins "a ten-mile heat," that is the exaggeration of early American humorf illustrated also in the weather changes in "Oh! Susanna."
3.
It was doubtless while he was a Cincinnati resident that Stephen made the journeys to Federal Hill, Bardstown, summer home of the Rowan family, referred to by Morrison Foster when he noted that "Judge Rowan was his father's cousin" and that Stephen was "only an occasional visitor at Federal Hill."7 Judge Rowan had been United States Senator from Kentucky, Kentucky Supreme Court Judge, and commissioner to define the Mexican boundary. His son, John Rowan, Jr., served as Minister to the Two Sicilies, upon appointment of President Polk.8 Relatives of the Rowans by marriage were the family of General William Haines Lytle,9 who then lived on Fourth Street.
It would be natural that Stephen should wish to visit his distant kinsfolk, the aristocratic Rowans at Bardstown. Such journeys would not be formidable: an overnight packet trip from Cincinnati to Louisville and then
f "Gladstone, who was always fond of music, is now quite enthusiastic about negro melodies, singing them with the greatest spirit and enjoyment, never leaving out a verse, and evidently preferring such as 'Camp Down [sic] Races.*"—The Right Hon. Earl of Malmsbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister.10 |
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