Tallwoods, the home plantation of the Dunwody family in the West,
now the personal property of the surviving son, state senator
Warville Dunwody of Missouri, presented one of the contrasts which
now and again might have been seen in our early western
civilization. It lay somewhat remote from the nearest city of
consequence, in a region where the wide acres of the owner blended,
unused and uncultivated, with those still more wild, as yet
unclaimed under any private title. Yet in pretentiousness, indeed
in assuredness, it might have rivaled many of the old estates of
Kentucky, the Carolinas, or Virginia; so much did the customs and
ambitions of these older states follow their better bred sons out
into the newer regions.
These men of better rank, with more than competency at their
disposal, not infrequently had few neighbors other than the humble
but independent frontiersman who left for new fields when a dog
barked within fifty miles of his cabin. There were neighbors
within half that distance of Tallwoods, settlers nestled here or
there in these enfolding hills and forests; but of neighbors in
importance equal to that of the owner of Tallwoods there were few
or none in that portion of the state.
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